Emission module

The emission module, developed by STOWA and Deltares, calculates the effect of emissions as a function of human activities and hydrological characteristics in catchment areas. The emission module enables in a relative simple way the set-up of a schematization for catchment areas. The result can be used for reporting or can be used as input in water quality models for surface water systems. The emission module enables the evaluation of the effect of measures (e.g. the construction of waste water treatment plants, reduction of use of fertilisers) and scenarios (population growth, hydrological conditions) on the emission of pollutants to the surface water system. The emission module is a stand-alone software product, which can be linked to DUFLOW and SOBEK. In the future, coupling to other water quality systems are foreseen.

The emission module is a tool that relates water flows to pollutant loads. It links the hydrodynamic flows from rainfall-runoff models to pollutant emissions for water quality models. The emission module can aggregate data from various emission sources for a certain area and computes the total emission of substances to a surface water system. In this way, the emission module can be seen as a “link” between emission data and water quality models.

The emission module can run in stand-alone mode or in combination with the existing simulation models DUFLOW and SOBEK. The data for pollutant sources can be obtained from (1) national databases, like the so-called Emission Register (website www.emissieregistratie.nl), (2) individual monitoring data from water board authorities or (3) calculations rules based on emission factors, which can be adapted by the user.

For the calculation of the pollutant load to the free surface water, either the existing rainfall-runoff models SOBEK-RR or DUFLOW-RAM, or own hydrological data can be applied.

The emission module computes emissions and concentrations based on the input specified by the user in a GIS embedded user interface.