DEVELOPING INFORMATION SYSTEM SUPPORTING ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT FOR INDUSTRIAL ZONES

Transcription

1 DEVELOPING INFORMATION SYSTEM SUPPORTING ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT FOR INDUSTRIAL ZONES 1 Bui Ta Long, 2 Nguyen Thi Truyen, 3 Duong Ngoc Hieu, 1 Luu Minh Tung 1 Institute of Environment and Resources, 2 Hochiminh city Environmental Protection Agency, 3 University of Technology Abstract Construction and development of industrial zones (IZ) are being common tendency in many developing countries in order to bring about a positive change in the economics. During the past years, many IZ formed and developed strongly in Vietnam affirm their important role in the national economics. Beside the positive contribution to the economic development, the IZ also intensify the pressure of environmental pollution. Although there has been considerable effort from the authority, this seems to be insufficient to the demand of environmental protection. In order to effectively support the environmental management of the IZ, one should firstly create effective management tools basing on the application of the newly informatics achievements because of the fact that good tools do help to form the effective management system. This article presents the result of information technology application in environmental management of IZ in Vietnam. For the case study of Le Minh Xuan IZ in Hochiminh city, the article introduces the research on building TISEMIZ program (Tool for Improving Strength Environmental Management for Industrial Zone). The objectives of TISEMEIZ are to support the IZ and the local environmental management authorities in storing and seeking the data on environmental management, to help in information exchange and periodic report between the IZ and the local environmental management authorities.. 1. OVERVIEW Up to the end of June, 2007, there are 148 IZ having been established nationwide in the total natural land area covered 32,120 hectares of which area of industrial land qualified for lease reached 21, 224 hectares, accounted to 66% of total natural land. 90 IZ have come into operation in the total natural land area of 19,790 hectares and 58 IZ under the course of land clearance and compensation and capital construction [11]. Likewise, in late June, 2007, the nationwide industrial zones have attracted over 2,500 valid FDI projects in total investment fund registered at approximately 24 billion USD and over 2,700 domestic investment projects in total investment fund worthy over 135 trillion VND [11]. Up to now, investors from over 50 countries and territories have invested to Vietnam industrial zones, amongst Taiwan remains continuing in the top position with total registered investment fund at over 5 billion USD, the next ones are Japan (approx. 4.3 billion USD) and Korea (approx. 3.1 billion USD). Currently, nearly 3,500 projects in the IZ nationwide have come into production and business in total invested fund attained approx. 12 billion USD and 80 billion VND. Total investment fund for infrastructure accumulated in late June, 2007 has reached approx. 550 million USD and 16,000 billion VND. In line with IZ, technical infrastructure in Vietnam such as: seaport, road system, etc. has also been in the same route. In Ho Chi Minh City, the commencement dated as of 1991, Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone (EPZ) was established. Upon 15 years of development planning, Ho Chi Minh City has got 3 EPZ, 12 IZ in total area of 2,354 hectares. The efficacy of IZ and EPZ in the past 15 years has showed the investment productivity of the investment in area continuously going up in the development stages. In 2005, on the average, every hectare of industrial land in Ho Chi Minh

2 City has attracted by 3.3 million USD of investment fund and generating 1,487 million in industrial outcome value and 1.8 million USD in export revenue. EPZ and IZ in Ho Chi Minh City have attracted 1,117 domestic and international investment projects in total fund greater 3.6 billion USD (in which 460 projects have foreign investment fund). Presently, there are 11 IZ having solved job for 211, 437 labors. The budget collection has significantly increased through the years: in 2005, the estimate of 530 billion VND gained, increased 74.8% in comparison with that of 2004 and in 2006, 742 billion VND and increased 40% compared with that of 2005 respectively [11]. The organization of environment management system in IZ is presently conducted by the following major specialized bodies: - National level: Vietnam Environment Protection Agency (VEPA) belonging Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) carrying out the environment protection for all IZ in Vietnam. - Provincial/city level: Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DONRE) of province/city owning IZ carrying out the environment protection for all IZ situated in the territory of the province/city. Provincial/city IZ management board in associated with DONRE carrying out the environment protection for all IZ situated in the territory of the province/city. As for Hochiminh city (HCMC), environmental management in the plants of IZ is empowered to Hochiminh city Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (HEPZA) in the associated statutes. However, upon the availability of environment protection law in 2005, this statute revealed a few irregularities in management organization assignment that it currently is the need of the coordination for the settlement. - District level: Division of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) is liable to the implementation of state managerial function in term of environment protection at district level under the guidance of DONRE. - Interprise level: In principle, specialized environment section must be available in every production plant. It is however not numerous in majority of the production plants in fact. In most case, it is the plurality from other sections and hardly be a particular importance and even unavailable in some plants. The scopes of the environmental management in the IZ consist of the followings: - Examining the implementation of the environmental stipulations, the compliance to the approved planning and economic and technical evaluation of IZ. - Guidance, acceptance, consideration and granting the certificate of environment protection commitment/environmental impact assessment for the investment projects conformable to the list of registered business lines of the IZ. - Conducting the environment supervision in IZ in the course of infrastructure construction and in operation process of IZ. - Inspecting the production and business activities of the member establishments operating in IZ. - Holding the final inspection for the waste treatment works of the establishments operating in IZ. - Detecting and dealing the violations in respect of environment protection. - In association with the state and local authorities concerned carrying out the environmental examination, inspection within the management scope upon request.

3 - Acceptance and giving settlement for the disputes, claims and accusations in relation to environment pollution caused by the activities in industrial zone. - Controlling the waste classification, collection, transportation and treatment arising in IZ. In association with the concerned organizations in domestic wastage, industrial refuse and hazardous emission treatment under the regulation of wastage management and treatment of the central and local authority. Presently, the management of environmental data for the IZ has not still been computerized to keep pace with the requirement of environment protection assignment in this stage. The management in such a manner reveals numerous limitations in: - Essential information browse in the data bulk is in snail-paced. - Data exploitation is difficult and having not been automated and that putting the difficulty for the planning, change monitoring and environment report preparation. - Load forecast and calculation for serving environmental assessment and the collection of waste water fee have not been sufficiently and scientifically. - The efficacy evaluation of environmental protection assignment at IZ is so difficult. Environmental management at IZ in current stage requires a data source in mass. It is to meet the challenges of environmental management at IZ inventing today, it is needed to build up the effective tools on the basis of the research of hard-line information technology applications. In addition, it is to turn into the regional and international integration, HCMC needs to build the information infrastructure qualified to international requirements. Environmental information systems at IZ and EPZ here play the key role. 2. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL FOUNDATION Situation evaluation, forecast and adoption of the managerial decisions in term of natural resource and environment in current stage not are not in separation to the necessity of the gathering, transmission, preservation and the analysis of various information lines. It is to solve such issues, a new trend in research has been formed entitled Environmental Informatics (EI) in the world. EI is an urgent sector pertaining to the development of the protocols and standards both in technology and science for the share and integration of the data and environmental information /[5]/. The principal property of EI is the inter- discipline, the result derived from the intercross of environmental science, computation science and certain social science ones. EI does the research the development of the effective techniques to take out concise and reliable information for environment research, for environmental management and helps enhance the social awareness. This would boost the intensiveness and the technology development and acts an accelerant for the combination of sectors such as environment monitoring, environmental database and environmental information systems, geographic information system, numerical simulation, based knowledge systems, internet exploitation, data display, machine human interface, information theory and enhance the knowledge of the community in term of science /[5]/. Environmental pollution supervision assignment in current stage requires the huge storage of environment information arrays changing on the permanent basis. It is not the storage but also needed to effectively exploit and use the data for the adoption of the decision in various managerial levels. All these elements create another intensive research trend named Environmental Information System (EIS).

4 Researches in relation to EIS in Environmental Management have been done in numerous studies. In work [12] presented the study result of application of Geographic Information System (GIS) for designing EIS for monitoring water and air pollution in the urban areas. The scopes to be presented including: (1) Definition of information system, (2) Construction of hard and electronic data management system, (3) Construction of GIS database for industrial establishments, public sewage treatment stations and wastage treatment areas, (4) Construction of regional information system, (5) Development of GIS database for environment monitoring, (6) Development of laboratory information system for computer. In work [13] did research of conceptual basis of EIS. The result reveals the environmental information capacity needed to be managed now is the large, it is necessary to concentrate on building up computer solution for serving the management target. Intelligent Environmental Management System IEMS is referred to the computer technologies supporting environment management systems. The tasks to be covered by IEMS including: supervising the activities of wastage collection, transport and treatment, emission measurement, making plan for the tasks, license and file management, relevant documents management and profitable expense analysis and the selection of alternative material. Figure 1. Research methodology In work [14] does research the conceptual and practical for the integration of industrial environment information. This is a new method in the aim to integrate industrial information systems (chemicals management, data management in emission quota business and so on). The goal of this method is aim to make the industrial environmental information systems more

5 effectively and conveniently such as the cut-down of expenses of gathering, usage and storage of data, tools and managerial methods in industrial environment and it is to enhance the control capability on environmental operation outcome. This method is aim to give the assistance to the environmental managers and environmental information technicians. The study of the environmental management issues for IZ has been done in the works [4], [6]- [9]. The study of EIS application in Vietnam has been done in work [5]. In [1]-[3] have built the EIS applying in the environment management at provincial/municipal levels in Vietnam. Initially, EIS was proposed to be the tri-block integration, namely, environmental monitoring block, mathematical model block and environmental information supply for public block. The main feature of these works is the application of GIS as a key technology. This article focuses on the research of the issues in connection to environmental management administrative system at IZ in Ho Chi Minh City. On such a foundation, the study of scientific foundation for the construction of informatics tools serving the environment management for the IZ in Ho Chi Minh City through the review on Le Minh Xuan IZ, HCMC, to be taken as a study case for the pilot application of environment management in computerization and the approach for the study of this work is shown in Figure ACTUAL STATUS OF MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND REQUIREMENT OF DESIGN FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SYSTEM TISEMIZ For many years in operation, IZ have built the diversified environmental database system in various data scopes. However, these databases still are spontaneous for the service in their regular operations as well as to provide the variety of subjects, enterprises and internal report with the data information. Figure 2. Type of environmental database of the IZ

6 The result of the investigation and survey in some IZ of HCMC showed the environmental database type in the common characteristics colligated in Figure 2. Currently, the relation in administrative organization system of IZ management is carried out by various authorities including /[6]/: - Provincial/municipal environment management authority is DONRE, in charge of management and implementation of the administrative punishment to the plants in IZ. - Relation between investor of IZ, EPZ and plants is the service. - Other authorities concerned including: Management board of IZ, VEPA, Division of natural resources and environment at district level, environment inspection authority, etc. - In association to conduct the environment examination including DONRE, other competent authority and investors of IZ, EPZ. Figure 3. Relationship in the environmental management system of IZ in Vietnam In Figure 2, the correlation between these authorities is shown. Requirements of the environmental management consist of: - Once 6 months periodically, plants and investors of IZ and export processing zones submitting the report of result of environment monitoring to environment management authority. - Once a year periodically, plants submitting the general report of the information in term of production activities, environment management assignment upon request (in report form) to environment management authority. - Assignments of other regular activities such as claim settlement, environmental acceptance, consultation in respect of environment, etc. and direct management, administrative penalty between the plants in industrial zone and environment management authority remains taking place on the daily basis.

7 - DONRE mainly does state management assignment in respect of environmental issues outside the fence of IZ. HEPZA, investors of IZ and plants doing the task of environment management inside the fence of IZ. Other authorities play the role of consulting in the decisions in respect of environment. The following issues needed to be solved by TISEMIZ: - Moving toward the direct user, namely environment management official in IZ aiming to manage the united environmental database, systematic integration, storage serving the management assignment and giving the assistance to the decision making. - Capable of connecting to informatics networks of environment management authorities in the future. - It is a must to be an effective management tool, systematic in design and conformable to operation situation of IZ, actual status of IZ management of the environment management authority in HCMC and compatible to the available Vietnamese Code of Environmental Standard. - The capacity large enough for storing the mass data at least in 10 years and flexibly in updating. - Contributing to solve the thin-populated status of managerial official of environment management authority through the decentralization for environmental official of IZ on gathering, updating and managing data. - Contributing to solve some holes in management assignment such as information update assistance in the unification and sufficiency, carrying out the automatic statistics, evaluation and report. - Detecting the compliance extent to the environmental protection stipulations, declaration information of the plants. - Detecting the irregularities in management at IZ such as the operation of central sewage station and declaration of sewage fee collection of the enterprises, etc. - In progression to enhance the efficacy of environmental management of environmental management authorities through the replacement of a part of periodical monitoring by using TISEMIZ program. 4. PROPOSED ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SYSTEM TISEMIZ TISEMIZ has two specific goals. The first one is to supply the informatics tool to assist Le Minh Xuan IZ and the managerial authorities concerned on: - Storage organization and browsing data in connection to environment management. - Conducting various analyses on the basis of stored database for timely evaluating and making plan for adjustment. - Promptly evaluating the impact of production activity over environment through the connection of database and mathematical model. The second one is to serve the information exchange and periodical report between IZ and environmental management authorities. TISEMIZ directs toward the users including infrastructure management company in Le Minh Xuan IZ, interprises inside Le Minh Xuan IZ and those who pay the interest to environmental information of Le Minh Xuan IZ. TISEMIZ program has to make sure the important functions of a EIS. First of all, TISEMIZ enables the entry of overview information in respect of Le Minh Xuan IZ as well as

8 enterprises belonging to such IZ. TISEMIZ makes sure the convenience for the users to look the attributive information: one side is the map of IZ and the other is database of enterprises in this IZ. The users may see information and upon the permission of the administrator of the network, might make the modification, amendment of information into database face to face. Secondly, TISEMIZ has to assure the prompt calculation, statistic and inquiry upon request. Thirdly, TISEMIZ has to assist the execution of the reports on the basis of entered database. The fourth one is that TISEMIZ has to help manage various air monitoring locations on the electronic map of Le Minh Xuan IZ as well as to enable the effective entry, storage and handling to the map in term of information varying according to time of the monitoring locations. The fifth one is that TISEMIZ has to assist the storage and the lookup of the environmental documents. Figure 4. Modular structure of TISEMIZ program TISEMIZ program directs toward the independent work from the user as well as the key administrator of the network of the infrastructure company of IZ, running on Internet, permitting the decentralization, preparation of the automatic report. To the extent of macro-management level, TISEMIZ has to help the storage of periodical reports submitting to the authorities concerned such HEPZA, DONRE of HCMC, DNRE of Binh Chanh district. TISEMIZ consists of numerous modules integrated in a united computer program. The structural outline of TISEMIZ is showed on Figure 4, Figure 5, Property of the modules in TISEMIZ is showed in Table 1. The source of data for TISEMIZ being showed on Figure 6. Table 1. Feature of modules in TISEMIZ No. NAME OF MODULE FUNCTION 1 GIS Drawing the layers of the map, turning on and off the map layers, zoom in, zoom out and full

9 screen view. Drawing the environmental objects in electronic map, object selection, moving object, deleting the object, moving the object group, picking the icon for object, etc. 2 Emission data management Managing the emission into atmosphere, discharge into water environment 3 Environmental monitoring data management Managing monitoring data of air, water environment, sewage grade of enterprises and central sewage treatment station 4 Modeling Calculating the pollution dispersion from the chimneys, outlet sluice by using mathematical models 5 Sewage fee calculating model Calculating sewage fee for the enterprises 5 Inquiry, report preparation Help prepare automatic report, conduct the statistic of data under the management. 7 Documents management Managing statutory documents pertaining to Environmental Management Assignment in IZ 8 Administrative authority management Managing information of administrative agencies in charge of state management in respect of environment TISEMIZ GIS Quản Environmental lý thông tin liên quan monitoring tới các cơ data quan quản lý Quản Administrative authority lý dữ liệu phát thải Quản lý dữ liệu quan trắc Emission giám sát data chất lượng môi trường Modeling Mô hình hóa Enquiry, report Documents Sewage fee model Managing layers Managing environmental objects on the map Waste water of the IZ Air pollution of the IZ Solid waste of the IZ Hazardous waste of the IZ Basic information on the IZ management board Basic information of HEPZA Basic information of DONRE HCMC, Waste water from the factories and the central waste water treatment platn Sensitive area around the IZ Air pollution at the factories and the surrounding areas of the IZ Checking, comparing, assessing the monitoring result Managing hydrological and meteorological data Model of water and air dispersion Model of solid waste and hazardous waste management Querying data Analyzing and processing data Storing, preserving data Reporting for different groups objects: HEPZA, DONRE, other objects Providing environmental information at different levels Environmental standards Environmental protection Law Decrees, circulars, decisions, regulation and instruction Other electronic documents According to the state regulations According to the water supply model Figure 5. Detailed diagram of functions in TISEMIZ program Initially, TISEMIZ has been put into environmental management application for Le Minh Xuan IZ. The user might access to the website to see information of enterprises/ Figure 7, Figure

10 8/, production situation as well as environmental reports to be carried out automatically by TISEMIZ/ Figure 9/. Figure 6. Data source for TISEMIZ Figure 7. Information on the company displayed in the map

11 Figure 8. TISEMIZ synthetically and synchronically manage the companies in Le Minh Xuan IZ 5. CONCLUSION Figure 9. Automatically querying report in TISEMIZ Presently, environmental management at IZ is encountering to the difficulty in data gathering, data storage and data inquiry and data access due to the lack of the unification in building EIS and the unavailability of the specialized aid informatics software. In this study, the result of building up specialized informatics tool TISEMIZ to serve environmental management at IZ has been presented. The product of this paper helps the environmental management authority concerned get a modern environmental management tool.

12 The decisions to be adopted under the assistance of TISEMIZ will be effectively and quickly much more. The orientation of the development of TISEMIZ is the integration of variety of environmental data and the supply of environmental information to various objects in the need of environmental information. In addition, TISEMIZ is in the need of more opinion contribution of the managerial levels so that it will become the useful EIS. This article is sponsored by the Thesis of science and technology study at Hochiminh level as well as the fundamental research program at national level in code No REFERENCES [1]. Bui Ta Long, Le Thi Quynh Ha, Luu Minh Tung, Building up software supporting environment pollution supervision assignment for the provinces and cities in Vietnam. Scientific and technical hydro-meteorological journal, N 12 (517), 2004, Pages [2]. Bui Ta Long, Building up software supporting environment pollution supervision assignment in Tra Vinh. Scientific project report for Tra Vinh province. [3]. Bui Ta Long, Duong Ngoc Hieu, Luu Minh Trung, Developing Environmental Information System using Web GIS Technology of a Case Study in Can Tho City, Vietnam. Proceedings of ACRS 2007, Malaysia. [4]. Pham Ngoc Dang (2004), Environment Management in the urban and in industrial zone, Construction Publishing House. [5]. Bui Ta Long, Environmental Information System, National University HCMC Publishing House, 334 Pages. [6]. Phan Thu Nga, Study of scientific basis serving the construction of unified environment management system in industrial zone. Engineering Ph.D thesis. [7]. Lam Minh Triet and Partner, Overview of methodology and science basis in environment management in industrial zone serving the construction and the fulfillment of environment protection regulation at industrial zone in Vietnam. Report thesis at National Level, Institute of Environment and Natural Resources, HCMC National University. [8]. Lam Minh Triet, Nguyen Trung Viet, Study of building up unified environment management system in industrial zone. Report thesis at HCMC level, Center of technology for environment protection (CENTEMA). [9]. Lam Minh Triet, Nguyen Thanh Hung, Nguyen Thi Thanh My, Phan Thi Thu Nga, Actual Status of environment and the proposal of the suitable solutions aiming to protect environment and consistently developing IZ in the main point economic regions in southern Vietnam. Proceedings of national environment conference. [10]. [11]. [12]. B.Patra, B. Pradhan (2005), Design of an environmental information system for monitoring water and air quality in urban areas, Disaster prevention and management. [13]. Margery Moore and Daniel Bordeleau (2001), The Intelligent Environmental Management System [14]. Maria Ericxon, Johan Tivander, Ann-Christin Palsson, Raul Carlson (2006), Industrial Environmental Informatics