EU Commission Phare Programme
Air Quality Management System
in Estonia
A Project Presentation
Project reference: EuropeAid/114968/D/S/EE

This homepage intends to give a description of the background to the project, the deliveries, and the potential of the project once it is in full use.

The project is now formally finalized and delivered
so there will be no more regular updates of this homepage.

Please note that some of the links (particularly to the EU) might not be working any more since the project is formally finalized and other sites might also have been moved.

For the interested reader, please just scroll down this page and you will get brief information. For more details, please just click on the links in the respective paragraph.

For the technically interested person, please do not miss the
Technical Content Page!

Background

Specifications, Tender, and Contract

Content

The Client

Partners

Presentations

Pictures

Background

The EU financed project is partly based on the long ongoing twin-city relation in the area of environmental protection between

the City of Göteborg, Sweden, and the City of Tallinn, Estonia started a in the late 80's.

The initial co-operation was mainly focused on the exchange of experience concerning issues like ambient air monitoring techniques and traffic planning. An exchange of experience on the political decision-making level was started. After some years it was realized that there was a need to give a more concrete form to the co-operation.

The first phase of the Air Quality Management Project in Tallinn was formally started in 1994 and was financed in co-operation between the Tallinn Environmental Board (link to Tallinn City homepage) and Sida (former BITS) and the general Swedish support to the developing countries in the Baltic area.

The main idea was not to focus only on the technical matters, but also how to integrate environmental protection aspects in general and Air Quality Management aspects in particular in the daily work for different organizations and decision-makers in Tallinn.

People from different organizations were involved from the Swedish as well as the Estonian side. For various reasons, the formal contractual party on the Swedish side was chosen to be Conexor.

The first phase of the project was finalized in April 1999.

After lengthy discussion between the City of Tallinn and Sida, Sida decided in June 1998 to partly finance a second phase of the project. The second phase should be the confirmation of the first phase in terms of applications and practical use.

The second phase was finalized in December 2002.

A long discussion has been ongoing if Tallinn and Estonia would be able benefit from a EU (Phare Programme) financed project within the area of Air Quality Management that would cover the whole of Estonia.

Finally, in May 2004, the EU Commission Phare Programme decided to issue a tender for the “Supply and Technical Assistance contract for procurement of Air Quality Management System”, which is this project.

A general remark can be made in this context:

 Long-term development and co-operation aid projects will often eventually result in commercially viable projects which would not have been realized without the initial support...

For more information about the background, please refer to more detailed description of the Estonian-Swedish Co-operation on Air Quality Management in Tallinn.

Specifications, Tender, and Contract

In May 2004, the EU Commission Phare Programme issued a tender for the “Supply and Technical Assistance contract for procurement of Air Quality Management System” (Identification number: EuropeAid/114968/D/S/EE).

The following formal documents are the basis for the project:

Please note that the EU might have deleted the following sites.

This page gives the formal information about the project.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/europeaid/cgi/frame12.pl
Please search for "114968"

Supply contract forecast:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/europeaid/tender/data/AOF36403.htm
Supply procurement notice:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/europeaid/tender/data/AOF48767.htm
Tender dossier (March 2004):
http://europa.eu.int/comm/europeaid/tender/data/AOF48768.pdf
Please note: This document is 210 pages and around 1.4 MB

SMHI decided to bid for the project together with a number of competent partners.

On 8 December 2004 the Ministry of Finance of Estonia informed SMHI that the contract had been awarded.

The formal contract was signed in February 2005. The time frame was one year, i.e. final delivery in February 2006. This was a very tight schedule for such a comprehensive and complex project. Thanks to enthusiastic and intensive work from all parties involved the project was formally delivered on time.

Content

For more detailed technical information about the content, please click here.

The project consists of:

• Air Quality Modelling including Emission Database handling

• Internet Based Application System

• Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations

• Meteorological Measurement Equipment

• Passives Sampler Campaigns

• Laboratory Equipment

• Computers

• Training

The Client

The formal client is the Ministry of Finance of Estonia, but the practical client is the Estonian Environmental Research Centre (EERC). Naturally there is also a close cooperation with the Ministry of Environment.

The EERC specializes in chemical analyses in the field of environment protection. It also provides a comprehensive range of analyses, all made in compliance with international standards. The EERC facilities are well-equipped, enabling precise determination of environmentally dangerous substances in different sample types.

The Air Quality Management Department (link to project page currently in Estonian only) fulfils the orders of international and local monitoring programmes, local governments, companies and institutions, involving:

• Ambient air monitoring on national level;

• Specific ambient air measurements campaigns;

• Emission measurements from point and area sources;

• Preparation of pollution permits for enterprises;

• Dispersion modelling in local and regional scale;

• Environmental impact assessment for air quality;

The air quality management department is also responsible for conducting the international (EMEP) and national air quality monitoring in Estonia. The national air quality monitoring network consists currently of 7 stationary stations. The department operates multiple stations for different enterprises (large combustion plants, oil terminals, quarries etc).

Partners

A project of this complexity and with the variety of supplies and development requires several competent partners who will specialize and deliver their unique equipment, competence, and/or development.

The main features, and what makes the project unique, are the stringent requirements when it comes to dispersion modeling and the Internet based applications for the main server and the users all over Estonia.

Since SMHI is the main competence centre for dispersion modeling in Sweden and is also the license holder of the comprehensive Internet Based Air Quality Management System, the Airviro System, together with its strong financial base it was natural that SMHI would shoulder the role of Contractual Partner.

SMHI will adjust, develop, and implement the various wind and dispersion models required.

The development of the special features for this project as an additional function to the comprehensive Air Quality Management System, the Airviro System, will be accomplished by Apertum. The staff at Apertum have been working with the Airviro System since it was initially developed. The current version of the Airviro System is web based which is one of the key requirements in Estonia.

The main user of the Airviro System is City of Stockholm Environmental and Health Administration, Sweden. The application in Stockholm includes many parallels to the Estonian one; advanced modeling; regional application with more than 30 users (municipalities and regional organizations).

The on-line ambient air quality monitoring equipment is crucial for the accurate input of monitoring data. Since the experience of using Horiba equipment in earlier projects in Estonia is good, Horiba will deliver the specified type of equipment also in this project.

The project includes several servers and more than 100 PCs and laptops together with monitors and printers. Kernel will deliver high quality equipment and peripherals from IBM®.

The laboratory equipment will be used for analyses of air quality samples that are not handled by the on-line monitoring equipment. The specifications suited Varian® equipment from Candela.

The use of Passive Samplers is a rather unique part of the project. By using this type of monitoring equipment from IVL the project will be able to provide information from large areas (actually the whole of Estonia) as mean values over a couple of weeks.

The meteorological input is crucial for accurate analyses and, in particular, dispersion modeling. The ambient air quality monitoring stations are equipped with standard measurement equipment but for the large-scale input there is a need for more advanced and comprehensive equipment installed in high masts. FDS has delivered such equipment to many projects.

A project of this complexity needs experienced project management. Conexor has as its business concept to initiate, develop, co-ordinate, support in finding financing, and manage different project activities in the area of Environmental Protection. Conexor was also the contractual partner for the BITS/Sida financed project that laid the foundation stone for this project.

Please find a listing of the partners with Internet references and e-mail addresses below.

Presentations

For a possibility to view and/or download some of the presentations made during the project, please click here.

Pictures

A lot of pictures are shot during the project; some technical, some informative, and some quite enjoyable... J

Please click here to see some of them.

For further formal information about the project, please refer to the persons below:

Organizations / Partners / Links

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