Development of an ecotoxicological database on hazardous chemicals in accordance to REACH Regulation: the DESC example

A software system was designed and developed for managing information regarding chemicals produced and/or imported in the UE market, in accordance to a REACH (EC Regulation No 1907/2006) goal to organize the available information on substances chemicals and to make them easily accessible to the public. To achieve this objective three operative steps were performed: requirement analysis, conceptual analysis and logical project. The requirement analysis consisted of drafting an initial document (requirement document) shared and commonly agreed with the stakeholder, represented by the Italian Ministry of Environment, in which the system goals were defined. The document describes what the software system should do and what are constraints in its implementation. Firstly it contains a description of needs of the system functions and the way to achieve the strategic objectives previously set. Secondly it defines a glossary describing all the ecotoxicological technical terms used in the system. Finally the document outlines the requirements and describes the services. The main function of the software was that to archive information related to hazardous chemicals, subdividing into five classes: 'General Information', 'Classifications', 'Overview', 'Chemical-physical properties ' and 'Ecotoxicological properties and environmental distribution". The software was equipped with a default set of features for consultation and data query that allows users to analyze the entire dataset of information. The conceptual analysis consisted of the construction of conceptual models representing the system requirements and was implemented by means of the UML (Unified Modeling Language), a standardized general-purpose modeling language for software engineering: three different graphs were developed to take in account the data structure and functionality of the system and to model the dynamic aspects of system behaviour over time. The conceptual analysis evidenced that the best solution to create a software able to manage huge a amount of data on chemicals was that to implement a database. For this purpose an EntityRelationship Model (ER) was chosen. Finally the logical project was realized by developing a client/server system. The database and the website were implemented by using respectively Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 technology and are currently available on the internet at http:// www.dsa.minambiente.it/SITODESC/.