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This area of research deals with the conception and development of
environmental information systems in organizations. It focuses mainly
on questions about environmental management in distributed systems, IT
technical support for environmental management systems and the
application of meta-information systems in environmental information
systems. The following questions are of special interest:
Architecture of environmental information systems: A document based
architecture for meta-information systems was developed and implemented
prototypically in the application EcoExplorer system. EcoExplorer is
run off a client application based on Java and a lotus domino server
application. The meta-data can be worked upon, arranged and
administered in EcoExplorer with the help of the XML based descriptive
language EML (Environmental Markup Language). In order to administer
the abbreviations and concepts of environmental information systems a
subject specific thesaurus was created. The Eco-thesaurus prototype was
implemented as well as a simultaneous representation for an
alphabetical and systematic order of the terms. In addition an
information system was developed to efficiently manage the legal and
regulatory demands that have to be applied to the specific
environmental information systems.
Material and energy balance: A method for account based management
of material and energy flows including the associated cost flows were
developed as well as a method for the management of selected
environmental impact categories and prototypically implemented in
application ACCOUNT. Thus the cost account based user interface allows
improved handling data in comparison to modeling tools based on
material flows.
Environmental Reporting: An XML based document structure was
developed for environmental reporting of organizations and
prototypically implemented in the EcoExplorer . Due to the modular
characteristics of the developed document structure, each organization
involved in the environmental reporting system can provide their
respective report component independently as an XML based document.
These independent components can then be aggregated, into one single
report. This structure supports an inherent federal documentation
process is fostered.
Environmental Markup Language (EML): The described research
activities are embedded in a standardization process of an XML based
description language for environmental data namely, EML. EML belongs to
the family of XML based domain specific applications like "Chemical
Markup Language". The working group EML from the society of computer
science is supported by the Institute of Information Systems. It aims
to bring together scientists and practitioners industry and
administration in order to advance the usage of EML in the
international arena of environmental information systems so as to
exchange expertise worldwide. The motivation for this lies in part on a
uniform language and discussion basis in the area of environmental
informatics and also in part on a standardized format for information
and meta-information in the area of environment.
Researchers involved in
the project
Prof. Dr. Hans-Knud Arndt
Prof. Oliver Günther, Ph.D.
Selected
Publications
Arndt, H.-K., Christ, M., Günther, O.: EcoExplorer / ACCOUNT: An
environmental management information system, in: Systems Analysis
Modeling Simulation, Vol. 41, pp. 615-627, 2001
Arndt, H.-K., Günther, O. (Hrsg.): Environmental Markup Language
(EML), Workshop 1, Berlin 1999, Metropolis, Marburg, 2000
Arndt, H.-K., Günther, O.: Semantic-based Access to Environmental
Reports Using Topic Maps, erscheint demnächst in International Journal
of Environment and Sustainable Development
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