Chilean ambient air portal

The SINCA (Sistema de Información Nacinal de Calidad del Aire) portal is a tool owned by the Chilean Ministry of Environment (MMA). Through this portal the Chilean public can access information on air quality from the whole country.

The SINCA portal is a tool which’s objective is to contribute in an active way to the protection of the health of the population by gradually improving the knowledge, the supervision and the management of the air quality. In the SINCA portal you can find information about:

  • Air quality measurements
  • Historical data
  • Information about previous stations
  • Documents related to air quality and air quality monitoring
  • Related links, both national and regional
  • For MMA and MINSAL (Ministry of health) users some Airviro modules can be accessed through the SINCA portal

In Chile the responsibility for air quality monitoring is shared by a number of different authorities (the ministry of health MINSAL, the ministry of agriculture, the MMA, private companies and others) which has not contributed to an efficient management of this information. Through SINCA, MMA tries to standardise the processes associated to an efficient management of air quality information with the goal to optimise the resources available on this subject in the country. During the five last years several lines of action have been developed to improve the quality of the information about the measurements, e.g.:

  1. Design of procedures and protocols for monitoring of pollutants.
  2. Evaluation of the different monitoring networks in the country.
  3. Development of SINCA as a MMA project, based on the Airviro software, which allows the management of large volumes of information from the different monitoring networks in the country and the connection to other systems.

Other measures were also taken within the SINCA project. E.g. an Airviro system for the Bío Bío region was configurated and some air quality stations are now reporting in real time.

EDB:s in SINCA

The use of Airviro in the SINCA project made it possible to incorporate the existing emission inventories made by MMA. It will also improve the quality of future emission inventories on regional or national level. It will make spatial merging of different databases easier, as is required by the OCDE (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ) and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). It will make the inventories from different years compatible and the basic inventories will have a structured format which will make scenario evaluation possible. It will also make the existing data easier to access. The higher goal of the whole procedure is to facilitate the work done at MMA in this area.

SINCA was developed for MMA by Apertum, DICTUC, R9 Ingenería and SMHI.

Apertum

Apertum had the coordinators role in the SINCA project. Apertum was also responsible to make sure that the structure of the data bases was compatible with Airviro and for the import of data to Airviro.

Dictuc S. A.

Dictuc has made most of the emission inventories in Chile and has developed tools to facilitate the construction of emission inventories. They have a great knowledge about the local problems involved in establishing a emission inventory. They also have knowledge about and access to historical emission data.

The main role of Dictuc in the SINCA project is to account for the up to date data bases and their structure and to grant that future proposals for emission data bases will be in line with the Chilean conditions.

SMHI

SMHI’s role in the project is not only counselling but also to guarantee that the project holds a high standard. Our principal functions have been:

  • Technical support and diagnosis of existing inventories
  • Contribute to the design of the new EDBs
  • To participate in the design of the national EDB
  • To organise and carry through a two day training course

R9 Ingeniería

R9 Ingeniería has developed software and made consuelling on information technologie since 1998. their principal role in the project is to administare it and to be responsible for the management of the data in the SINCA portal, but also to capacitate.

R-9 Ingeniería Ltda.
Apertum IT AB
SMHI
Dictuc