The development of the information system envisaged by action B2 of the LIFE PHOENIX project got underway. This information system will be one of the pillars of the integrated PMOC pollution governance model that the PHOENIX project aims to achieve. The very ambitious goal of action B2 is to bring together and interconnect (in a single virtual container) territorial, environmental and health data, currently splintered among different public bodies of the Veneto Region.

The information system will therefore allow to overcome the difficulties of finding the data that characterized the various stages of PFAS pollution management. But its potential does not end here: in fact it will be able to create links between the various types of data, returning a higher information value. For example, it will be possible to identify and view on a map the possible sources of pollution that insist on a specific river basin, or to identify the agricultural areas irrigated by a specific water source. This will allow to predict or reconstruct the path followed by a pollutant in the environment, from the source of pollution to the potentially impacted targets.

The following figure exemplifies which type of user interface the system will provide. In this example, some types of pressure sources (landfills, composting plants and recovery plants) are geo-located on the map of the Veneto Region in relation to the river basins and the Municipalities.

The information system of the LIFE PHOENIX project will constitute a solid knowledge base available to the regional authorities responsible for environmental and health matters, to carry out risk analyzes that will allow to predict or identify further early episodes of pollution and therefore to intervene in a timely and effective manner.

During the last year, the project team met frequently and regularly to implement action B2, in an activity of close collaboration between the Veneto Region and the UOC Information System of Azienda Zero, structure responsible for the action. After having previously identified the relevant information, numerous meetings were held with the information-holding Public Bodies to verify its effective availability and define in detail which data to include in the information system. Subsequently, the project team established which interconnections to create between the various types of data and defined a series of pre-configured reports that the system will have to produce. The possibility of an advanced use of the information system through free queries was also envisaged. Having completed this complex design work, the development phase of the information system is now underway, which will make it usable on September 2020, according to the deadlines set by the LIFE PHOENIX project.