Emergency Air Monitoring and Assessment System (EAMAS)

A custom web-based solution that enables rapid response to air-quality incidents in the Alberta oil sands

Alberta contains the third-largest crude oil resource in the world, as well as considerable natural gas deposits. As these resources are developed there is an increased risk of industrial accidents and pollutants being accidentally released into the atmosphere. The province’s environment ministry needed a tool to monitor, evaluate, and respond quickly to emergency air-quality problems whenever accidents occurred. We developed the Emergency Air Monitoring and Assessment System (EAMAS) – a state-of-the-art, web-based GIS system that draws together several streams of information to give emergency response teams and decision-makers clear and detailed predictions of how an accidental gas release can be expected to behave at a specific site.