GREAT-ER

GREAT-ER (Geography-referenced Regional Exposure Assessment Tool for European Rivers) is a powerful software tool for modeling the fate and behaviour of chemical substances in surface waters. It combines a geographic information system (GIS) with chemical models for calculating and modeling spatially explicit substance concentrations.

Substance concentrations calculated by GREAT-ER are displayed in color-coded maps. Input data for calculation are physical-chemical and biochemical substance parameters as well as geo-referenced production and consumption patterns. This way it is e.g. possible to calculate spatially explicit substance concentrations resulting from data for sewage treatment plants and industrial emitters. Concentrations can be analysed on a local scale in terms of the effects of single substance discharges as well as on a regional scale for evaluating immission resulting from the combination of multiple emission sources.

GREAT-ER creates a direct link between emission and immission (concentration) and provides the possibility to analyse potential hot spots showing the highest concentrations within a catchment as well as to identify the most important emission sources on a regional scale.

Currently available catchments

• Ruhr - a tributary of river Rhine which is situated in North Rhine-Westphalia (approx. 220 km)
• Sieg - flows into river Rhine near the city of Bonn (approx. 150 km)
• Main - the third largest tributary of river Rhine with a length of 520 km
• Itter - a small North-Rhine Westphalian tributary of river Rhine
• Hase - situated in Lower Saxony with a length of approx. 170 km
• Glatt - a Swiss tributary of river Rhine of a length of approx. 38 km

GREAT-ER Preprocessing

Completed projects

• Development of GREAT-ER in corporation with CEFIC
• Incorporation and calibration of Elbe and Rhine basins
• Incorporation of River Main catchment
• Geo-referenced modeling of zinc in the River Ruhr catchment

Current projects

• Geo-referenced modeling of zinc in the River Rhine catchment with a comparison of the two tributaries Sieg and Main
• Geo-referenced modeling of copper in the River Ruhr catchment
• Geo-referenced modeling of OTNE in the River Ruhr catchment

Poster for all projects

Publications