Abstract
Groundwater contamination often occurs because of discharge, leakage or spillage of industrial chemicals. This type of contamination must be prevented because high-tech industries should be able to procure the required amounts of high-quality groundwater for their manufacturing processes. It is now recognized that the reduction of negative external effects of manufacturing is not only necessary for ecological sustainability, but also for economic sustainability. The objective of the Advanced Environmental Monitoring System (AEMS) is to develop effective systems for the fast and continuous monitoring of groundwater contamination around industrial facilities. The AEMS will identify the contaminants and locate their sources, thus enabling users to take appropriate measures to prevent the contamination from spreading. It can also be used as a tool capable of assessing environmental hazards caused by contaminated groundwater by rapidly and efficiently identifying the toxic contaminants. In this paper, we present the state of soil and groundwater contamination in Japan, the necessity of groundwater monitoring, the state of monitoring apparatus, and the outline of the AEMS project. The AEMS can be used not only for the leakage monitoring of industrial chemicals but also for risk management in such fields as waste disposal landfill or in bioremediation sites that require long and real-time monitoring.
