GENASIS philosophy
People know over 50 million chemical substances and several ten thousands are used on a daily basis to improve our lives such as fuels, plastics, textiles, detergents, pharmaceuticals, pesticides and electronic equipment. Nevertheless, we are aware that some chemicals once introduced into the environment may severely affect the ecosystem balance and may quickly appear in our food and thereby influence people in current and future generations. Protection of the environment and effectiveness evaluation of measures applied are usually linked to monitoring of a parameter or indicator but available data are stored in closed databases of relevant institutions.
We are also aware of recent global and national legal and political requests for enhanced research and creation of instruments able to collect or evaluate data and establish and/or optimize risk management related to the increasing levels of chemicals in the environment, their interaction and presence of new chemicals whose effects on environment and human health have not yet been fully explored.
Therefore we aim at creation of a national system for on-line data interpretation that is able to provide continuous and complex evaluation of available information related to the presence of toxic compounds in environmental matrices including related ecological and health risks and serve also as tool for environmental education.
GENASIS will be a public system available for multiple users – regulatory bodies, industry, waste management and remediation companies, scientists as well as general public.
GENASIS aims
In accordance with global research trends and both global and national needs for establishment of complex information systems to support decision making at various levels we wish to:
Create a practical tool – new generation of multidimensional software – for data repository, expert analysis, simultaneous visualization of outputs from environmental and other data from multiple data sources
Design and test a system for on-line complex assessment of anthropogenic activities and their effects on environment including related ecological and health risks
Ensure more effective data mining of existing and new data including their integration and on-line connection to other data sources
Provide access to all representative data on presence and distribution of chemicals in environment for multiple users and interested stakeholders
Increase the knowledge on environment contamination
GENASIS use
GENASIS can be used for data management, visualisation and interpretation in relation to chemicals and their presence and effects in the environment. We currently test GENASIS’s ability on a narrower group of chemicals – persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
Nationally, we use its outputs to publish and show yearly changes in concentration of monitored chemicals in various environmental matrices. The results are published as national inventory and also as user-friendly data presentation from national monitoring network (MONET). MONET visualisations provide users with spatial trends, characterises various types of sources and depict effectiveness of local, regional and national measures.
There is a significant international (global) GENASIS potential such as to provide support for the Stockholm Convention data management and other related activities. At present, there is a pilot on-line visualization tool for Global Monitoring Plan data reported in the first round of regional reports as approved by the 4th Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention.
Background documents
This part of the GENASIS portal contains overview of sources and documents that influence the design, scope and functionality of GENASIS. These sources and tools are often of legal or strategic nature and are relevant to national, regional and/or global levels.
This gradually updated overview therefore comprises multilateral environmental agreements on chemicals management (MEAs), national and international legislation and strategies related to chemicals management, data collection, presentation and interpretation.
This section currently provides links to official websites of MEAs that influence the content and define new approaches and requirements to GENASIS data collection and presentation.