The Conference was devoted to the-state-of-the-art and usage of modern environmental observation techniques, modeling tools and information technologies for air, water, soil and vegetation cover pollution assessment in integrated information systems aimed at environmental management for industrial areas on city and regional scale. It is aimed at filling a gap between basic science achievements and their practical applications in this domain as well as at creating a solid foundation for mitigation of pollution in selected areas.

The Conference has been organized by the Institute of Atmospheric Optics (IAO) SB RAS and Tomsk Scientific Center (TSC) SB RAS and taken place at premises of the both Institutions. The organization and work of the Conference was financially supported by FW5 INCO COPERNICUS 2 Accompanying Measure Support Grant (ICA-CT-2000-60001), by INTAS Conference Monitoring Grant (00-MO-0134) and by a set of national and regional institutions: Presidium of SB RAS, United Scientific Council on Mathematics and Informatics of SB RAS, Administration of Tomsk Region, State Committee on Ecology of Tomsk Region, Tomsk University of Systems and Radioelectronics (TUSYR), IAO, TSC and Institute of Optical Monitoring (IOM) SB RAS.
The multi disciplinary Conference had been run as a set of consequent sessions devoted different aspects of the theme. The list of Session/organizer/chair includes:
Opening/Plenary session/ Evgueni Gordov;
Special session devoted presentation of the FW5 INCO COPERNICUS 2 Project ISIREMM: /Kurt Fedra and Evgueni Gordov;
Session on Observations: local and remote sensors for air, water, soil and vegetation assessment/Yury Arshinov;
Session on Remote Sensing/ Anatoly Korikov and Edige Zakarin;
Session on GIS and Multi-dimensional databases/ Yury Polishchuk;
Session on Urban and Regional Scale Modeling/ Vladimir Penenko;
Session on Observations, Modeling and DSS for Environmental Management/Control of Hydrologic Systems in Urbanized and Industrial Areas/ Oleg Vasiliev and Stepan Shwartsev;
Session on Assessment of Soil and Vegetation Cover/ Vladislav Vorobiev and Anatoly Dukarev;
Session on Information-Computational Systems, Atmosphere and Climate Change Assessment/ Evgueni Gordov;
Session on Integrated Information Systems for environment assessment/management/ Kurt Fedra and Alexander Fazliev;
Special session: Monitoring of the INTAS projects in Environmental Sciences/ Evgueni Gordov; and
Round Table: Urban/Regional Environment state assessment and management/mitigation of pollution/ Ravil' Tukhvatulin.

Three types of papers were delivered at the Conference, namely invited (30 min.), contributed (15 min.) and poster papers. Only papers whose authors were unable to come were presented as posters. An opportunity to put to the absent authors questions by email was organized. During five days of work 25 invited, 73 contributed and 17 poster papers were delivered, which occupied near 45 working hours. Papers were presented from 46 institutions from 11 countries, which includes papers from 33 Russian institutions, from 2 Belarus, 2 Germany and 2 Uzbekistan institutions. Institutions from Austria, Belgium, Greece, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan and Romania contributed with 1 paper each. Russian papers present activity of different research and educational centers, namely 9 Tomsk institutions, 7 Novosibirsk and Moscow institutions, 6 S.Petersburg institutions. N.Novgorod, Tumen’, Tver’ and Tambov cities were presented by 1 institutions each. It should be added that developed at the IAO Information Center information system was used in process at the Conference organization which opens to remote users an access to the Conference Program, Abstracts and all relevant information.

Four invited talks of general importance for environmental research and applications were presented at the Opening/Plenary session. Their titles explain the Program Committee choice. They are “On development of the Space Monitoring Center of Siberia (SMCS) and creation of multidisciplinary technologies of monitoring”, “Urban environmental management: integrating monitoring, GIS and simulation modeling”, “Legal aspects of environmental information exchange ” and “Tomsk regional ecological legislation”. Remarkable features of the papers are cooperation of basic science and meteorological service in the first paper, orientation towards end users (administration and population) in the second paper and first hand end user experience in Russian federal and regional environmental legal issues demonstrated in the rest two papers.

At the special session devoted to presentation of the FW5 INCO COPERNICUS 2 Project “ISIREMM: Integrated System for Intelligent Regional Environmental Monitoring & Management” background information on the Project as well as input of the Partners into its preparation and performance was given in 7 following reports: E.P. Gordov, K. Fedra “General description of the Project”; G.G. Matvienko “IAO activity in environmental studies”; V.V. Penenko “Numerical simulation of trams-regional pollutant transport”; V.P. Kabashnikov Optical tools for air quality monitoring in city and industrial center (IP NASB, Belarus); B.S. Sakhariev “Geo-information system for air quality monitoring in Almaty city” (SRI, Kazakhstan); R.T. Tuckhvatulin “Environmental policy and practices of Tomsk Regional Administration” and E.P. Gordov “ISIREMM and forthcoming projects”. The session also resulted in dissemination of information on EC 5 Framework Programme as a whole.
At the Session on Observations: local and remote sensors for air, water, soil and vegetation assessment 4 invited, 12 contributed and 4 poster papers were delivered. The papers delivered demonstrate mature state of development of remote and local sensors employing modern physics achievements. Usage of both: active and passive optical and acoustical technologies was demonstrated, and impressive results obtained in process of environmental field measurements were described.

At the Session on Remote Sensing 3 invited and 5 contributed papers were delivered. The scope varies from “Problems of space ecology” to technologies of information retrieval from satellite photometry and images with applications to early forest fire detection, to determination of industry affected zones and their correlation with population health. The later paper describes cooperative work of specialists in area of image processing with researchers from Siberian State Medical University.

At the Session on GIS and Multi-dimensional databases 3 invited, 4 contributed and 3 poster papers described results obtained in 3 States (Kazakhstan, Russia and Uzbekistan) were delivered. Papers described current level in environmental data storage in the NIS States as well as usage of geo-information systems for regional and urban pollution mapping.

At the Session on Urban and Regional Scale Modeling 2 invited and 9 contributed papers from Belarus, German and Russian institutions were delivered, in which different level advanced numerical models for pollution transport were described. Presented were sophisticated 3D GCM adjusted to consideration of air-vegetation-soil interaction, models of mesoclimate and pollution of cities and industrial regions, 2D models for numerical simulation of pollution propagation in urban boundary layer as well as direct and inverse modeling efforts for monitoring, diagnosis and atmospheric quality prediction. Involvement of former “weapon” scientists from Aerobiology institute into civil area due to grants from ISTC (all in all 4 papers at the Conference) deserve special phrasing.

At the Session on Observations, Modeling and DSS for Environmental Management/Control of Hydrologic Systems in Urbanized and Industrial Areas 2 invited, 3 contributed and 2 poster papers were delivered. In spite of the fact that the session does not present coherent pattern of current situation in the marked by rather general title area (the reason is a change of the Session Chair in process caused by unforeseen by former Chair unavoidable heavy commitments) the Session was useful both for the professional in area and for researchers from neighboring domains.

At the Session on Assessment of Soil and Vegetation Cover 2 invited, 5 contributed and 3 poster papers were delivered. Papers described ways to soils and ecosystem assessment developed by Moscow and Tomsk schools of specialists as well as reported on developed instrumentation for mercury concentration determination which might be very useful at relevant emergencies.

At the Session on Information-Computational Systems, Atmosphere and Climate Change Assessment 3 invited, 5 contributed and 4 poster papers, which accumulated results forming fundamental background for environmental information systems, were delivered. The contributed paper “Development of the atmospheric air quality monitoring in Moscow” should be especially mentioned as atypical for Russia case, when a municipal end user participates in development and usage of air quality monitoring system.
At the Session on Integrated Information Systems for environment assessment/management, which are the ultimate aim of the community, 2 invited, 4 contributed and 1 poster paper were delivered leaving apart the delegated to Plenary session paper on the theme. The both invited papers provided audience with description of environmental systems relying on data from modern local and remote sensors both stationary and mobile (car or aeroplane). Dominated nowadays tendency to rely on Internet as a mass media was illustrated by several papers as well.

At the Special session: Monitoring of the INTAS projects in Environmental Sciences 7 papers describing 7 recently performed and currently run INTAS Projects were delivered instead of previously planned 5 papers. Both the papers reported and subsequent discussion gave to the Projects results a vision and dissemination as well as provided the audience with some useful for future cooperative project preparation hints and “know-how”.

During the Round Table: “Urban/Regional Environment state assessment and management/mitigation of pollution” 11 participants participate in discussion of the theme. Among them are RAS Corresponding Member Lykossov, Profs. Gordov (IAO), Korikov (TUSYR), Penenko (ICMMG), Polishchuk (GISC), Shwartsev (TAIPGG) and Drs. Antipov (IOM), Arshinov (IAO), Dukarev (AIF), Fazliev(IAO), Turov (IPC). Results of discussion were summarized by Professor Tuchvatulin as follows:
Impossibility to mitigate pollution level in a city/industrial center without support of contemporary information systems for monitoring state of environment provided with powerful DSS block for reasonable management environmental situation as a whole;
Necessity to save multi disciplinary approach as a research basis for such a system, which should monitor state of air, water, vegetation and soil;
Necessity to explain to local authorities and population importance of indicated above approach to pollution mitigation via scientific publication, memorandums, specialized Web-sites and regional mass media;
Importance of multi disciplinary conferences for a research basis forming for contemporary information systems for monitoring state of environment in a city/industrial center.

At the closing Session participants thanked Sponsoring Agencies, notably EC INCO COPERNICUS2 Programme, for their support of the event which gave to the Organizers financial resources required to run the ENVIROMIS 2000 Conference on proper technical and organizational level. In particular, the COPERNICUS2 Programme financial support has been used to buy durable equipment, to cover personnel cost, , to buy some consumables and cover other specific project costs, such as communication expanses, publication expanses, etc.