Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.Air pollution is a critical issue in contemporary times. For this reason, officials and
environmental managers are in need of suitable tools for visualization, manipulation and
analysis of environmental data. Environmental concerns in Europe have encouraged the
European Environmental Agency (EEA) to create the European Pollutant Release and
Transfer Register (E-PRTR). The E-PRTR is vital and valuable because society will
benefit if the data are used to improve monitoring and consequently advance
environmental management. However, the data are not accessible in an interoperable
way, which complicates their use and does not allow for a contribution to environmental
monitoring. This paper describes a Web GIS system developed for the monitoring of
industrial emissions using environmental data released by the EEA. Four research
objectives are addressed: (1) design and create an interoperable spatial database to store
environmental data, (2) develop a Web GIS to manipulate the spatial database, facilitate
air pollution monitoring and enhance risk assessment, (3) implement OGC standards to
provide data interoperability and integration into a Web GIS, (4) create a model to
simulate distribution of air pollutants and assess a population’s exposure to industrial
emissions. The proposed approach towards interoperability is an adoption of servicebased
architecture for implementation of a three-tier Web GIS application. This
system’s prototype is developed using open source tools for the Valencian Community
of Spain