Environmental Monitoring Systems: Types, Purposes

There are different types of environmental monitoring, depending on what we want to analyze.

• Air monitoring means taking air samples to keep track of air quality and greenhouse gas levels.
• Water monitoring includes assessing the impact of pollutants and chemicals in rivers, lakes and the sea, and also keeping track of floods, droughts and water quantity.
• Ecosystem services monitoring uses satellite data to document the interactions between human development and the environment, for example by measuring forest cover versus farmland, and biodiversity monitoring involves keeping track of animal and plant species in specific areas.
• Fire, drought and flood monitoring focuses on early warning and damage assessment for natural hazards such as forest fires, floods and droughts.

Salinity monitoring uses remote sensing, GIS, and electromagnetic waves to monitor soil salinity, which, if imbalanced, can have detrimental effects on water quality, infrastructure, and plant yield.

The different types of environmental monitoring help prevent natural disasters and define environmental parameters to quantify the impact of certain activities on the environment.

Public authorities and international organizations have environmental monitoring programs in place, which generate environmental monitoring reports.

For example, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) maintains the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), an online inventory of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants. The database shows global emission trends to help analyze energy, climate and air pollution policies for industrialized and developing countries alike.

While cities cover 3% of the Earth’s land surface, they create more than 70% of all the carbon emissions that lie at the root of our planet’s looming climate crisis. To keep global temperature increases to 1.5°C or below, cities must achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. To do that, they must make everything — from factories and homes to transportation and consumer devices — more energy efficient and interconnected.

In other words, every urban area must become a smart city with smart energy infrastructure that tracks and communicates crucial information — such as power consumption levels and environmental monitoring data — in real time.

This is where our smart city solutions come in. Enel X’s smart public lighting is connected to a digital platform that integrates information from sensors that can, for example, assess air quality and pollution levels in different parts of the city at the same time.