Internet GIS for Air Quality Information Service for Dalian, China

Abstract

Since the 1970s, environmental monitoring in China has formed a complete web across the country with over 2000 monitoring stations. China State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) has published an annual report on the State of the Environment in China since 1989. The Chinese government began to inform the public of environmental quality and major pollution incidents through major media since the late 1990s. However, environmental quality data has not been adequately used because of constraints on access and data sharing. The public and interested groups still lack access to environmental data and information. After examining the current air quality reporting systems of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Ontario Ministry of Environment, reviewing current Internet GIS technology and sample websites, this thesis developed an ArcIMS website to publish air quality data and provide background information to the public for the city of Dalian, China. The purpose is to inform the public of daily air quality and health concerns, and to improve public awareness of environmental issues. A better-informed and educated public will be more likely to voluntarily conserve the environment in the long run. The development of this thesis can satisfy most basic expectations. However, due to the limitation of current Internet products like ArcIMS, symbology and connection with outside databases are not adequate. In addition some regular GIS analysis functions are not available to Internet GIS products. This development can be further improved to serve other environmental data to the public with better interactivity through coding. Similar Internet GIS products can be used in other Chinese cities to report their air quality data. For internal data sharing and reporting within the government, an open, interoperable distributed GIService is recommended, which is believed to be the future of Internet GIS.