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| What is GREAT-ER | GREAT-ER Output | Application Examples | Model Validation | What's Next? | |
GREAT-ER is:
- A model for environmental risk assessment and management of chemicals in river basins.
- A higher tier support system designed for use at a post-screening level in the EU Risk Assessment process (REACH), and in the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD).
- A software system that combines a GIS (Geographic Information System) with fate models to produce a simple and clear visualisation of predicted chemical concentrations and water quality along a river.
- A tool to study the impact of chemicals emitted by point sources into rivers: GREAT-ER allows to calculate GIS-based equivalents of 'PEClocal' and 'PECregional' for the aquatic environment.
- Already implemented for a variety of river basins: 5 in the UK (Aire, Calder, Went, Rother, Exe), 1 in Italy (Lambro), 6 in Germany (Itter, Unter-Main, Main, Rur, Rhine in Northrhine Westfalia, and Elbe), 1 in Belgium (Rupel), 1 in France (Mayenne), 1 in Spain (Llobregat) and 1 in Switzerland (Glatt).
- Accessible for free to anyone involved in environmental research, risk assessment, management or education.
The developers have decided to make GREAT-ER 2 available as Open Source Software to allow full transparancy, and to encourage further model or software improvements by third parties. We hope to hear back about any such new developments.
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Why GREAT-ER ?
- Current multimedia environmental risk assessment models generate regional exposure concentrations which are averaged over an entire fictive region.
- Risk assessors need an improved tool to calculate accurate and realistic site-specific exposure concentrations, and meaningful regional averages. GREAT-ER allows to achieve a high degree of accuracy in chemical exposure assessments for freshwater systems.
- GREAT-ER allows to assess spatial and temporal variability in a probabilistic approach (Monte Carlo method).
- A system was needed to support river basin management, allowing 'what if?' scenarios.
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GREAT-ER Software and Technical Requirements:
Currently there exist 3 working software versions of GREAT-ER:
GREAT-ER 1.0 was the first release of the model. The current technical standard is version 1.05. This version is not distributed anymore. The current versions are GREAT-ERdesktop and web versions.
To note that the underlying fate models for chemicals and available catchments are identical in all GREAT-ER systems. Only the software architecture differs. See the specific sections for more information for the desktop and web version.
These were the technical requirements for running GREAT-ER 1.0x.
- Windows® NT 4.0 Operating System.
- ESRI ArcView® 3.0a, 3.1 or 3.2 GIS Software.
(expert GIS knowledge is not required).
- Pentium II processor or better, 128 MB RAM, >100 MB free disk space
The source code of GREAT-ER 1.05 has been released in 2003 and the software is now licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence (GNU).
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