Abstract

In order to improve the air quality in the Netherlands, the Ministry of Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) has authorised the establishment of The National Air Quality Cooperation Programme (NSL). Within the framework of this programme, the central government and local and regional authorities are collaborating to ensure that the Netherlands achieves timely compliance throughout the entire country with the limit values for particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide. The NSL includes a monitoring programme to ensure that this objective is achieved. One important part of this programme is an information and calculation system - i.e., a monitoring tool - that aims to guarantee compliance with the limit values through a yearly process of actualisation. The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) has performed a baseline assessment of this system prior to the start of monitoring. Due specifically to the consistency of its approach, the monitoring tool has great potential. However, there remain a number of important points for improvement before it will be a truly robust system. Despite the consistency of the approach, the prognostic calculations show a relatively high degree of uncertainty - mainly because the quality of the input data is unknown. The quality of the locality-specific input data is primarily the responsibility of local authorities, which provide the information. At the present time, these data are not subjected to further substantiation in the monitoring programme and, consequently, it is difficult to assess the quality of both the data and the calculated concentrations that are based on these data. Given the current limitations of this combination of monitoring tool and input data, it is not possible to draw any conclusion to the monitoring results. This report contains recommendations on how to improve the quality of the input data and thereby reduce the uncertainty of the end result. The quality of the monitoring results will be examined in more detail during the drafting of the first Monitoring Report. The monitoring tool constitutes an important supplement to the Aarhus protocol which ratifies public access to environmental information within the EU. The calculation instrument that forms the core of the monitoring programme was developed under great time pressure, and parts of it are still in the development stage. Therefore, at the present time, the only conclusion that can be drawn by the RIVM is that the calculation methods used satisfy the technical and statutory regulations for calculating air quality. It is not yet possible to comprehensively test whether the entire system (including the complete database and website) performs correctly. Consequently, it is also not possible to make a general pronouncement on either the system or the quality of the monitoring results in this baseline assessment.