The environmental control of industrial installations based on the Command & Control strategy implies high costs for national governments and companies and operative difficulties in sampling and analyzing. If not inserted in a wider context, the environmental point-by-point data give an incomplete representation of the impact of businesses.

A new methodology for remote plant monitoring is proposed, which is based on the preliminary study of the process, the reconciliation of the data used in the first principle equations, the construction of models of various complexity (statistical inference or governing equation-based, CFDs, ANNs, fuzzy logic, expert systems, hybrid models), for real-time estimates of environmental critical parameters. On-line calculations detect potentially critical anomalies and allow adoption of corrective actions in favor of the environment and the companies. In this way, they could comply moment-by-moment with authorization prescriptions and achieve a better corporate image.

The potentiality of this tool is shown by a case-study on waste incinerator. The expected pro is a better control efficiency that becomes preventive and continuous and gives more credibility and transparency to the overall control system. The benefits are both for the public and the companies. Methodology requires hard work for design, development and calibration of models, data analysis, cyber-security requirements, and training; nevertheless, it could reduce by 20% costs incurred by the control body. The biggest pros are related to medium-large establishments (such as waste-incinerators or crude oil refineries) that sometimes meet difficulties in gaining public acceptance.