GEQES: The Grid-Based Environmental Quality Evaluation and Information Service System

Environmental quality evaluation (EQE) is an important task of environmental protection. A large number of evaluation models have been developed for many environmental domains, such as water environmental quality of rivers, lakes and sea, air quality and environmental noise situation. Traditional EQE involves a complicate process which consists of data collection, data transmission, quality evaluation, evaluation result correction and publication, and it needs mass manual work. Along with people's more concerning with environmental status, it requires more powerful technique to accelerate the process of EQE. Hence all kinds of elements of EQE (data, environmental standard, evaluation method, human, etc.) need to be organized together to collaborate with each other. This paper presents an environmental quality evaluation and information service system to facilitate the EQE process, which utilizes grid computing technology to construct the basic IT infrastructure. The core functions such as data management, evaluation and information sharing are built as grid services to achieve more flexibility and extensibility. This system has been implemented and running in Sanming city of China and the effect is quite promising.