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Survey of environmental informatics in Europe
Environmental Modelling & Software 21 (2006) 1519e1527 www.elsevier.com/locate/envsoft
Survey of environmental informatics in Europe Werner Pillmann a,*, Werner Geiger b, Kristina Voigt c a ISEP International Society for Environmental Protection, Bechardgasse 24/12, 1030 Vienna, Austria Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Institute of Applied Computer Science, P.O.B. 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany c GSF e National Research Centre for Environment and Health, Ingolstaedter Landstr. 1, 85764 Neuherberg, Germany b
Received 3 May 2006; accepted 3 May 2006 Available online 19 June 2006
Abstract The annual EnviroInfo conferences held for almost 20 years now build a platform to disseminate methods and results in Environmental Informatics. This includes information processing in environmental protection and research as well as informatics applications in the field of environmentally sound technologies and related fields. The Technical Committee (TC), Informatics for Environmental Protection of the German Society for Informatics (GI) has organized these annual conferences in five European countries. The theme of the EnviroInfo 2005 conference, Networking Environmental Information, provided a new opportunity to review the mosaic of Environmental Informatics approaches. This article provides a survey of research results, information sources and newly developed applications in this field. Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Environmental Informatics; Environmental information processing; Environmental Information Systems; EnviroInfo conferences
1. Introduction Environmental problems in the 1980s resulted in an increased ecological awareness in Europe, which considerably enhanced political and scientific activities for the protection of the environment. In the science sector, a rapidly growing community conceived new computer applications for decision making and information exchange in the field of Abbreviations: DPSIR, Driving force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response; EDSS, Environmental Decision Support System; EEA, European Environment Agency (Copenhagen); EI, Environmental Informatics; EIONET, European Information and Observation NETwork; EIS, Environmental Information System; EMAS, Eco-Management and Audit Scheme; Eurostat, Statistical Office of the European Union; GAO, United States Government Accounting Office; geinÒ, German Environmental Information Network; GEMET, General European Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus; GIS, Geographic Information System; HDT, Hasse Diagram Technique; METEOR, Method of Evaluation by Order Theory; OECD, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; SuperThes, Thesaurus development and maintenance software; UDK, Umweltdatenkatalog (Environmental Data Catalogue). * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ43 1 715 2828; fax: þ43 1 713 4131. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (W. Pillmann), [email protected]. de (W. Geiger), [email protected] (K. Voigt). 1364-8152/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2006.05.008
environmental protection. Activities in the field of Computer Science applied to environmental research and protection are denoted by the term ‘‘Environmental Informatics’’ (EI). The EI community continually addresses new and challenging topics in the interface between the fields of Informatics (Computer Science) and Environmental Sciences. While this community was being established, the Technical Committee (TC) Informatics for Environmental Protection of the German Society for Informatics (GI) served as a major platform and motor. Apart from several other activities, the TC organizes the annual international conference on environmental Informatics e EnviroInfo. In view of the 20th anniversary of EnviroInfo, which will be celebrated in 2006 in Graz/Austria, this contribution shall give a survey of the European developments in EI. To illustrate the large number of fields that make up environmental information, a model of ‘‘the environment’’ will be presented. Then the system will be extended into a model for sustainable development (Pillmann, 2005). Using this conceptual structure, an overview of the contributions to the 19th EnviroInfo conference held 2005 in Brno, Czech Republic, will be given. Finally three selected examples will provide insight into the
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applications of information exchange and informatics in the environmental sector.
Technical Committee GI-FA 4.6 Informatics for Environmental Protection
2. A history of Environmental Informatics 2.1. Environmental information policy in Europe A few pioneering scientists alarmed by environmental emergencies and disasters developed an early concept of ‘‘the environment‘‘ in the 1970ies. The accumulation of environmental research findings and detailed measurements of environmental pollution prompted media reports, and thus boosted environmental awareness and brought political responses despite the opposition from many established interest groups. Improved awareness of environmental burdens stimulated organizational changes in governments, the establishment of national Environmental Protection Agencies and the foundation of new non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Environmental changes were recognized and findings on the interactions between society and the natural environment have become increasingly apparent. Within the last two decades environmentally relevant effects such as the increasing amount of waste and hazardous waste, environmental pollution and disasters (e.g. Seveso and Chernobyl) are recognizable for the public as problems and threats. The right to access environmental information (‘‘Public Access to Environmental information’’ Directive 90/313/EEC, 2003/4/EC), originally reserved for governments, improved the public’s insight into environmental information and obliged politicians to support environmental plans and enact a broad spectrum of legislative measures. ˚ rhus A further step was introduced especially with the ‘‘A Convention’’ on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental ˚ rhus, Matters (Ministerial Conference 23e25 June, 1998 in A Denmark), adopted by 39 countries, the EU and signed by 40 states (Jan. 2006). In particular, two of the three directives concerning access to environmental information and public participation in environmental decision making were supposed to be implemented in national law by February and June 2005 respectively. The 6th EU Environmental Action Programme ‘‘Our Future, Our Choice’’ (2002) recognized that we must decide on policies based on sound science. This is also reflected in the 6th EU Framework Research Programme (FP), which focuses on e.g. Climate Change, Biodiversity, Health and Resources. 2.2. Development of the scientific community of Environmental Informatics Up until the mid-1980ies, there was no scientific community specializing in information technology for environmental purposes. Those active in the field either followed IT communities independent of special areas of use, such as database systems, real-time computing or Geographic Information Systems (GIS), or joined specific areas of application, such as
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Informatics for Environmental Protection
Environmental Information Systems in Business
Simulation in Environmental and Geological Sciences
(general)
Fig. 1. Structure of the Technical Committee (2006).
environmental planning, environmental chemistry or forestry science, just to name a few. Developments such as forest damage in Europe and events like the Chernobyl reactor accident triggered a growing awareness in European societies as well as in other countries in the course of the Eighties of the hazards threatening the environment and, as a consequence, the natural basis of human life. This change of attitude resulted in activities such as UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) on an international level, and in a growing use of information technology for environmental purposes on a national level, especially by governments and administrations. At the initiative of Andreas Jaeschke and Bernd Page, a first specialized colloquium (for German-speaking countries) on ‘‘Informatics Applications in the Environmental Sector’’ was organized in Karlsruhe (Jaeschke and Page, 1986). It was attended by approx. 40 participants from research, public authorities and industry; it constituted the nucleus of the new scientific EI community in German-speaking countries. A Working Group on ‘‘Informatics for Environmental Protection’’ was founded in 1987 within the German ‘‘Gesellschaft fu¨r Informatik’’ (GI, Society of Informatics) in an effort to establish continuity and improvement in communication among the participants and to broaden the community. That Working Group was upgraded into a permanent Technical Committee the next year (Fig. 1). Since then, the Committee has been mainly organizing the annual Enviroinfo conference publishing a newsletter for the community establishing special interest groups and working groups to handle specific topics and organizing one or more TC meetings annually. For internal communication within the community, a newsletter was established in 1988 (mainly written in German), which can be found on the TC’s Website1. The annual conference has been attended by more and more participants numbering between 250 and 600 each year. What began as an annual symposium held in German, rapidly developed into a pan-European, international conference. The 19th conference in the series was held in Brno, Czech Republic, on September 7e9, 2005 (see Section 5.1 for details). 1
http://www.iai.fzk.de/Fachgruppe/GI/welcome.eng.html.
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The main communication and distribution medium is the proceedings volumes published for every conference. This application-oriented scientific documentation reflects new developments in the EI community. Thus far 30 proceedings volumes with 1500 papers on 14,000 pages are available. The papers in the proceedings are peer-reviewed by at least two members of the international program committee established for each conference. Some proceeding volumes can be accessed via the WWW.2 Apart from these basic activities, several textbooks have been written by members of the EI community over the past two decades. One of the first basic textbooks was entitled ‘‘Umweltinformatik’’ and edited by Bernd Page and Lorenz Hilty in 1994. A second edition was published soon after the first one (Page and Hilty, 1995). An international textbook edited by Nicholas Avouris and Bernd Page followed soon after (Avouris and Page, 1995). Two important books concerning one of the basic topics of EI, namely environmental databases and environmental information systems were published by Gu¨nther (1998) and Rautenstrauch and Patig (2001), respectively. A recent attempt to extend the focus from environment to sustainable development in general was made by Hilty et al. (2004). An approach to quantify the impact of information and communication technologies on sustainability was developed in a recent project (Hilty et al., 2006). This is only a small sample of available background material concerning EI. 2.3. Scientific environmental challenges and public awareness The EI community has always aimed at addressing new and challenging topics in environmental sciences in combination with computer science. These challenges are e.g. Climate Change, Nature and Biodiversity, Sustainable Production and Consumption, Environmental Health and Awareness Raising, the Management of Natural Resources, Effective Environmental Policy Measures and Legislation, addressed in the Management Plan 2006 of the Directorate-General for the Environment of the European Union and activities of the European Environment Agency; see Annual Report (EEA, 2005a). The Environment and Climate Change are also included in the draft themes of the 7th Framework Programme in the section ‘‘Cooperation’’, Information and Communication Technologies. However the authors’ personal experience cast doubt on whether conservative research programs and networks can adequately integrate social sciences with environmental sciences and computer science so as to foster sustainability. Apart from the European research community, decisionmakers have surveyed the opinions of voters in the Eurobarometer series 1974e2005.3 For instance in Eurobarometer 63 (2005), one of the questions posed to the 28,340 citizens interviewed in 28 European countries concerned the two 2 3
http://enviroinfo.isep.at/Past_Contributions.htm. http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/standard_en.htm.
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most important issues their respective countries were facing. Unemployment, the economic situation, crime and health care were the four highest ranked issues, while environment came in at only 12th place with 4% of the mentions. Special reports on the public’s opinions on environmental issues also exist such as ‘‘The attitudes of European citizens towards environment’’ (Eurobarometer 217, 2005). One of several results shows that 73% agreed that environmental conditions influence the quality of life and 88% approve the statement ‘‘policy makers should take environmental concerns into account when deciding in other policy areas such as the economy and employment‘‘. 3. A model of the human-environment interaction In order to get a deeper insight into the work of the EI community, we have to understand the basic input and output systems of our environment. Starting with ‘‘The Environment’’, Fig. 2 shows a system diagram of inputs to and outputs from the environment. Human influences and natural effects cause environmental changes in several spheres, which can be observed and condensed into indicators and other types of environmental information. The ‘‘social environment’’ is included here due to its important influence on the environment in terms of poverty, hunger, social exclusion, aging and unemployment as indicators of living conditions. An impressive number of indicator sets exists to describe this I/O system. From an environmental perspective the EEA environmental indicators (EEA, 2005b) are an important collection. The OECD‘s set of core indicators is often referenced; local and urban sets complete the indicator landscape. A US perspective can be seen in the report ‘‘Environmental Indicators e Better Coordination is Needed to Develop Environmental Indicator Sets That Inform Decisions’’ (GAO, 2004). In preparing this report, the US Government Accountability Office GAO estimates that the annual cost to the federal government of collecting environmental information is at least US$ 600 million. In general, the existing indicators show patterns and trends, but they do not provide explanations and they cannot be designed to serve all the different essential spheres. 3.1. Driving force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) and beyond The debate on sustainable development involves an overwhelming amount of information. Taking the European Statistical Office Eurostat as an example of this, we see that its Website offers 6086 tables with time series from almost every sphere of life. One way commonly used to describe the environment is the Driving force-Pressure-State-ImpactResponse (DPSIR) model. It is frequently used by the European Environment Agency (EEA) and by international organizations dealing with environmental information. Such a systemic approach is suitable for describing the time dependence of environmental processes. Applications of systems
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Natural influences on:
air water soil climate animals phytotopes;
natural disasters
Man-made influences
Resource use air emission water pollution noise industrial activities waste dumping energy consumption landscape changes Legislation internat. agreements governmental aid tax relief etc.
Data and information on the environment, predominantly pressures
Air, climate Water, Soil Humans, animals, plants Ecosystems Abiotic environment Landscape Technosphere Problem areas Resource consumption Air pollution, waste Climate change Biodiversity Chemicals Transport Sealing of soils Noise Ozone depletion Radiation etc.
Social environment Living & working conditions; recreation
Emission/pollution concentration SO2, NOx, Ozone, greenhouse gases particulate matter (PM10), nitrates in drinking water
noise level; contamination of soils; natural disasters use of resources etc. Indicators, indexes (land use, biodiversity recycling etc.)
Effects on human health food, water, soil, forests, materials, cultural assets economy etc. World population wealth/poverty unemployment hunger ...
Fig. 2. Input/output system environment: Influences and effects.
analysis methods and simulation for industrial and environmental studies are closely associated with names such as J.W. Forrester, E. Pestel and especially Meadows et al. (1993). Later F. Vester stimulated a discussion of the systemic nature of environmental processes with ‘‘The Art of Interconnected Thinking’’ (Vester, 2005) and ‘‘Our World: an Interconnected System’’. H. Bossel started in 1998 with ‘‘Earth at a crossroad’’, a descriptive model of the world in which he included economic, environmental, social, governmental and infrastructure elements in an interconnected system (Bossel, 1998). Fig. 3 represents an attempt to describe ‘‘sustainable development’’ from an environmental focus, using a system structure in an input/output model representation. The arrows running along the outside represent communication links between the economy, the natural and man-made environments (the technosphere) and consumers/voters (Pillmann, 2002). In this structural diagram the human impacts on the environment are embedded as well as goals e.g. pollution reduction, national environmental action plans, Local Agenda 21, Integrated Product Policy (IPP), and the Eco Management and Auditing Scheme (EMAS). The voters and private sector interests influence politics, government administrations, industry, services and households. Appropriate legislation and political measures such as taxes fostering environmentally friendly technologies along with information, research and environmental communication, limit the impact of enterprises, services and citizens on the environment.
4. The state of and trends in Environmental Informatics Most of the subjects addressed above are treated in one way or the other in the continuing work of the European EI community. An in-depth survey of activities can be obtained from the proceedings of the EnviroInfo conference series. A list of all conferences and publications is available at the Website of the Technical Committee.4 4.1. The structure of contributions to EnviroInfo 2005 The 19th conference in the conference series, EnviroInfo 2005, was held in Brno, Czech Republic, on September 7e9, 2005 (Hrebicek and Racek, 2005). The conference featured 145 contributions in the field of EI. An overview of the topics of the conference can be gained, and the practical relevance of the content of EnviroInfo 2005 in the pursuit of sustainable development can be demonstrated, when the topics of the conference are compared with the fundamental structure of the model in Fig. 3. Fig. 4 shows the information in the form of the main topics of EnviroInfo papers. This type of graphic representation provides an impression of how the manifold topics of the EnviroInfo 2005 are put together to form a coherent whole. 4.1.1. Dissemination of environmental information EI merged telecommunications and environmental information processing with scientific research and applications in 4
http://www.iai.fzk.de/Fachgruppe/GI/.
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Environment Technospere
Economy
Ressources
Enterprises
Taxes; Financial support
Natural
Environment
Products Pollution Waste
Public Households
Enviro nme infoma ntal tion
Information generation and distribution
ta
Legislation
Da
Politics, EU Administration
Environmental Informatics
Pillmann W. (2005)
Fig. 3. Systems diagram of the social, economic and natural environments, interlinked by information flow.
government and business. Within the 4th and 5th Framework Research Programmes, the European Commission supported the development of what was then called ‘‘Telematics’’ applications. Activities of the European Environment Agency fostered the dissemination of scientific and application-oriented environmental information and the implementation of Web technologies for EIONET, the Environmental Information and Observation Network in Europe. Countrywide, innovative environmental information systems such as geinÒ, the German Environmental Information Network5, the new version PortalU (Vo¨gele, 2005), the EEA information resources6 and Envirowindows7 are examples of contributions fostering public access to environmental information.
4.1.2. Metadata and the Semantic Web The concept of metadata was introduced in order to provide orientation in a space of continuously growing data and information. Metadata provides information about data, but does not include the data itself. Early applications were the Environmental Data Catalogue (Umweltdatenkatalog, UDK) developed in a cooperation of German speaking countries and environmental authorities, and the Catalogue of Data Sources (CDS) assembled on the European level. An innovative way to get access to (environmental) information is the World Wide Web and its ‘‘successor’’, the Semantic Web. The goal of the Semantic Web initiative is to create a universal medium for the exchange of data8. It is about the data currently in relational databases, XML documents, spreadsheets and proprietary format data files e all of which would be useful to have access to as one huge database (Berners-Lee, 2005). The German Federal Environment Agency UBA Berlin/Dessau developed a Semantic Network Service [SNS] for the German Environmental Information Network geinÒ. Furthermore the application of a Gazetteer, 5 6 7 8
http://www.gein.de/index.html. http://dataservice.eea.eu.int/dataservice/. http://ewindows.eu.org. http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/.
automatic indexing and a calendar of environmentally relevant events was covered.9 4.1.3. Environmental knowledge in the private sector The Eco Management and Auditing Scheme EMAS and the series of ISO 14001 standards (Environmental Management Systems) are stimulating the development of environmental knowledge within enterprises. Results from a worldwide statistical survey of EMAS and ISO 14001 sites are presented in Peglau (2005). The specific sites certified by EMAS in EU states can be accessed at the EMAS Website.10 The annually increasing numbers show that environmental management is being increasingly established in the private sector. A survey of companies’ experience with ISO 14001 in Germany demonstrates that an ever-growing number of companies are going beyond the statutory requirements and reducing environmental impacts through their voluntary introduction of an environmental management system. 5. Environmental Informatics case studies 5.1. Development of the Environmental Information System of Baden-Wu¨rttemberg The Baden-Wu¨rttemberg Environmental Information System (EIS BW) has a long history, and has often acted as a pioneer in German federal and state environmental information systems. At the very first EnviroInfo conference in 1986, a paper dealt with the basic design of the system. Important aspects of the development of environmental information systems can be shown by the example of the EIS BW (Mayer-Fo¨ll et al., 2004). EIS BW is the central tool of the state for providing environmental information and efficient access to that information. It encompasses the major environmental information systems in the state for the administration and for the public, providing a framework rather than constituting a monolithic system. 9 10
http://www.semantic-network.de/doc_intro.html?lang¼en. http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/emas/activities/index_en.htm.
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Politics e-Government Administration Private sector International organisations NGO's Public
Networks for Sustainability
Technosphere
EEA EIONET
Resources
Water Climate Air quality Waste Energy
Environmental management Urban environment
Indicators Environment health & security Corporate sustainability communication & reporting
e-Government e-Learning
ata tad Me
De cis ion
su p
gement Information Mana po rt
Early warning
Knowledge management
Environmental Informatics in the 7th EU framework Programme
Thesauri Ontologies Semantic Web
Web portals
raphic Geog ation Modeling m r o f n simulation I ems INSPIRE nd computing Syst a
l Environmental nta information me s n c systems nviro tisti rin E sta ee n g& gi nsin y En e se ecolog s t o m Rem scape ste d Lan n Sy
o mati nfor I l a t men Environ
g
Eco-Informa Special Foundation Session
In ap form pli ati ca cs tio ns
Environmental information
Pillmann W .(2005)
Fig. 4. Systems diagram with main sessions contents of EnviroInfo 2005.
The EIS BW has been developed in several generations. The first generation (as from 1983) focused mainly on individual, isolated data collections and information systems. In a second generation (1987e1994), overall data management and evaluation systems were realized, e.g., the RIPS pool for geographic data and the MEROS database for measured data. In a third and fourth generation (as from 1995), multi-usable basic components and services have been developed, e.g. the multi-usable disy Cadenza framework and the general Report¨ KO data ing System based on Cadenza and the common DB-U model (Mayer-Fo¨ll et al., 2005). In addition, the systems and data have been integrated even more. This development was associated with fundamental technical changes, some few basic features of which are outlined here: e An important system overcoming the ‘‘data cemetery’’ problem of the first generation of the EIS BW was (and is) the Environmental Data Catalog, which constitutes a metadata system and provides an overview of the information resources available in the state (see Section 5.2). e As the Internet and administrative Intranets developed, Web-based systems like the AlfaWeb contaminated sites information system (Geiger et al., 1999) became more and more important, allowing direct access to information. e A further step in the evolution was (and is) the development of environmental portals, such as the Baden-Wu¨rttemberg Environmental Portal (see Schlachter et al., 2004). These portals offer a central access point to the environmental information in the state and central search functions with links leading to the information wanted. e In addition, the dedicated systems have been equipped with Web services. This makes for a better distribution of functions (e.g. dedicated document server, database server, geodata server, etc.), and for easier functional
integration, as in the Theme Park Environment (Du¨pmeier and Geiger, 2006). Originally, EIS BW contained almost exclusively systems supporting political planning and decision making as well as execution by the administration. More and more national and European obligations to publicize environmental information as well as the growing importance of public participation have made information systems for the public increasingly important. The information systems for the public can be subdivided roughly into three types (Geiger et al., 2005): e Systems for making available ongoing measured data (air data including ozone data, radioactivity levels, water levels, etc.) and current forecasts (e.g. flood forecasts). e Systems primarily designed to make accessible administrative data available in documents, databases, and GIS, as for example the XfaWeb information systems11 with technical documents or the UDO system12 with structured data and maps. e Systems with the primary purpose of enhancing environmental awareness in the public. Only few such systems have been established to date, e.g. the Theme Park Environment. As requirements increase, so do the potential costs of development of environmental information systems, which is a severe challenge especially at a time characterized by growing budget restrictions. In an effort to develop powerful solutions in an economic way, better cooperation was promoted among the federal, state and regional authorities for developing and 11 12
http://www.xfaweb.baden-wuerttemberg.de/. http://www2.lfu.baden-wuerttemberg.de/brs-web/.
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maintaining these systems. Over the years, especially AJA/ KEWA R&D cooperation (project executing organization: Ministry of the Environment of Baden-Wu¨rttemberg [UM BW]) and ‘‘EIS Cooperation’’ were launched. After the two initiators, i.e. German Federal Ministry of the Environment (BMU) and UM BW, gradually all German state ministries of the environment have joined the ‘‘EIS Cooperation’’ (Mayer-Fo¨ll et al., 2005). 5.2. Multilingual thesauri In view of the planned enlargement of the European Union, additional language barriers will have to be overcome. The multilingual support addressed here is also important for environmental experts. Progress in multilingualism was made during the development of GEMET supported by the EEA, offering more than 5000 terms in up to 22 languages.13 The UDK Thesaurus offers German environmental terminology (22,629 terms) with the English translations of 11,531 terms. It was regularly updated and controlled by an editorial board until the end of 200414 and will be distributed 2006 on CD. The UDK Thesaurus is integrated in the newly developed thesaurus maintenance and visualization software SuperTHES.15 There is also a newly created ‘Thesaurus on Emergencies and Disasters’ TED16, a glossary supporting co-operation in accidents, disasters and relief operations. 5.3. Evaluation of environmental databases by multi-criteria assessment approaches Data on environmental chemicals detected in the environment are urgently needed to evaluate the risk these substances pose to human beings and the environment. Furthermore these data are needed to comply with the future environment and chemicals policy in the European Union. Not only commercial data-collections should be searched, but also the Web should be used intensively as a free source of scientific information (Doldi and Bratengeyer, 2005). Several evaluation approaches using environmetrical and chemometrical evaluation methods have been performed in the past. Pesticide resources which can be found on the free Internet were investigated and ranked by mathematical and multivariate statistical methods (Voigt and Welzl, 2002a). A recent publication aims at the evaluation of 12 Internet databases concerning their data-availability for environmental and ecotoxicity parameters (Voigt et al., 2004). Concerning environmental risk assessment the cooperation between scientists and decision makers has to be intensified. Several decision support tools have been developed especially for water resource management and published in Environmental Modelling and Software Bouma et al. (2005), Acreman (2005) and Mysiak et al. (2005) just to name a few examples. 13
http://www.eionet.eu.int/GEMET. http://www.cedar.at/wgr_home.at. 15 http://gis.umweltbundesamt.at/medis. 16 Based on the Australian Emergency Manual Series, http://www.ema. gov.au/. 14
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One approach to generic integration of different Environmental Information Systems (EIS) and Environmental Decision Support Systems (EDSS) tools is discussed by Denzer (2005). The methods introduced by the third author in this special issue of Environmental Modelling & Software are new approaches based on partial ordered sets that can be used to avoid the merging of data and thus preserve important elements of the evaluation and decision making processes (Voigt et al., 2006). These methods are ranking methods called Hasse Diagram Technique (HDT), ProRank (the commercial software of the HDT), Method of Evaluation by Order Theory (METEOR) which originate in discrete mathematics. They concern multi-criteria evaluation methods which can be used as tools to measure information quality, and hence are also applicable to decision making. These tools are often combined with multivariate statistical methods to round off evaluation results. In order to obtain more insight in the methodologies as well as in the applications in environmental sciences, we refer readers to the book ‘‘Order Theoretical Tools in Environmental Sciences’’ (Voigt and Welzl, 2002b). In this special issue of Environmental Modelling & Software an example is presented for the evaluation of 15 environmental and chemical free Internet databases with respect to the existence of data on chemicals in these resources (Voigt et al., 2006). ProRank software (Criterion, 2005) presents a new approach based on partial ordered sets. The consideration of the chemical substances (high-production volume chemicals, pharmaceuticals) in the database x is coded by 0 ¼ not available, or 1 ¼ available. The following sub-sets of the databases are evaluated: Single databases, European versus US databases, and databases which cover chemicals numbering from 2001 to 10,000. The Hasse Diagram Technique reveals the best (maximal objects) and the worst (minimal objects) databases and conflicts among them that arise due to different information content. This is an example of the integration and combination of the different aspects of EI, namely environmental information, environmental information systems and databases, environmental statistics, knowledge management, and decision support (see topics in Fig. 4). Furthermore the subject of environmental chemicals is closely related to their effects and hence to environmental and human health aspects. 6. Conclusion During the past two decades the TC ‘‘Computer Science in Environmental Protection’’ of the German Society for Informatics and, of course, the Environmental Informatics community in general have actively promoted the idea of EI as an interdisciplinary subject in its own right (a combination and integration of computer science, environmental science and approaches to sustainable development). These activities started in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and spread farther into other European countries. More and more international cooperation, e.g. with American, Russian, African and South American colleagues developed. There are close
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relationships to other societies and conferences such as ECOINFORMA (2005), ISESS (2006), the International Environmetrics Society (TIES, 2006) and the I-Know Conference (Tochtermann and Maurer, 2005). The TC is striving to intensify its efforts to actively set up collaborating networks for future projects. Additionally we are aware that we should improve our endeavours to convince stakeholders as well as the general public of the relevance of our activities to their lives. In future, the TC will continue striving to enhance environmental knowledge by linking key research topics, promoting scientific collaboration and education and developing new ways of communicating information among the technical community, policy and decision makers, and the general public. Acknowledgment Special thanks go to Lorenz Hilty and Thomas Ruddy, who supported this work with several helpful suggestions and proof readings. References Acreman, M., 2005. Linking science and decision making: features and experience from environmental river flow setting. Environmental Modelling & Software 20 (2), 99e109. Avouris, N.M., Page, B., 1995. Environmental Informatics, Methodology and Applications of Environmental Information Processing. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dodrecht. Berners-Lee, T., 2005. The Semantic Web e Interview 2005.. Bossel, H., 1998. Earth at a Crossroads e Paths to a Sustainable Future. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Bouma, J.J., Francois, D., Troch, P., 2005. Risk assessment and water management. Environmental Modelling & Software 20 (2), 141e151. Criterion, 2005. ProRank Software. . Denzer, R., 2005. Generic Integration of environmental decision support systems e state-of-the-art. Environmental Modelling & Software 20 (10), 1217e1223. Doldi, L.M., Bratengeyer, E., 2005. The web as a free source for scientific information: a comparison with fee-based databases. Online Information Review 29 (4), 400e411. Du¨pmeier, C., Geiger, W., 2006. Theme Park Environment as an example of environmental information systems for the public. Environmental Modelling & Software 21 (11), 1528e1535. ECOINFORMA, 2005. . EEA, 2005b. Indicators. . Eurobarometer 217, 2005. The attitudes of European Citizens towards environment. Special Eurobarometer 217. . GAO, 2004. Environmental Indicators e Better Coordination Is Needed to Develop Environmental Indicator Sets That Inform Decisions. 2004. United States Government Accountability Office. Report to Congressional Requesters. . Geiger, W., Reißfelder, M., Weidemann, R., 1999. Sharing technical information on contaminated sites using modern information and communication technologies. Technology 6, 379e383.
Geiger, W., Du¨pmeier, C., Ruchter, M., Schlachter, T., Weidemann, R., Ebel, R., Schmid, E., 2005. Examples of public environmental information systems and portals in Baden-Wu¨rttemberg. Environmental Risk Assessment Systems. e CD ROM Laxenburg. In: Environmental Software Systems: Proc. of the 6th Internat. Symp., Sesimbra, P, May 24e27, vol. 6. International Federation for Information Processing, ISBN 3-901882-21-9. IFIP Conference Series. Gu¨nther, O., 1998. Environmental Information Systems. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Hilty, L.M., Seifert, E., Treibert, R. (Eds.), 2004. Information Systems for Sustainable Development. Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (PA). Hilty, L.M., Arnfalk, P., Erdmann, L., Goodman, J., Lehmann, M., Wa¨ger, P., 2006. The relevance of information and communication technologies for environmental sustainability e a prospective simulation study. Environmental Modelling & Software 21 (11), 1618e1629. Hrebicek, J., Racek, J. (Eds.), 2005. EnviroInfo Brno 2005. Networking Environmental Information. Proc. of the 19th Int. Conf. Informatics for Environmental Protection. Masaryk University in Brno, ISBN 80-2103780-6. ISESS, 2006.. Pillmann, W., 2002. Modelling European environmental communication. In: Pillmann, W., Tochtermann, K. (Eds.), Environmental Communication in the Information Society, Part 1, EnviroInfo Vienna 2002. International Society for Environmental Protection, Vienna. Pillmann, W., 2005. The integration of environmental knowledge. In: Hrebicek, J., Racek, J. (Eds.), EnviroInfo Brno 2005, Informatics for Environmental Protection; Networking Environmental Information. Masaryk University in Brno, pp. 1e11. Rautenstrauch, C., Patig, S., 2001. Environmental Information Systems in Industry and Public Administration. Idea Group Publishing, London. Schlachter, T., Ebel, R., Geiger, W., Sawade, A., Tauber, M., Weidemann, R., 2004. Environmental information network of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Integration of the authorities’ environmental information. In: Sh@ring: Proc. of the 18th Internat. Conf. Informatics for Environmental Protection, Geneva, Switzerland, October 21e23, 2004, Part 1. Editions du Tricorne, Geneva, pp. 57e65. TIES, The International Environmetrics Society, 2006.
W. Pillmann et al. / Environmental Modelling & Software 21 (2006) 1519e1527 Vester, F., 2005. Die Kunst, vernetzt zu denken (The Art of Interconnected Thinking). Bericht an den Club of Rome. dtv-TB (5. Aufl.). Vo¨gele, T., 2005. A new and flexible architecture for the German Environmental Information Network. In: Hrebicek, J., Racek, J. (Eds.), EnviroInfo Brno 2005, Informatics for Environmental Protection; Networking Environmental Information. Masaryk University in Brno. Voigt, K., Welzl, G., 2002a. Chemical databases: an overview of selected databases and evaluation methods. CD-ROM Review 26, 172e192.
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Voigt, K., Welzl, G., 2002b. Order Theoretical Tolls in Environmental Sciences, Order Theory (Hasse Diagram Technique) Meets Multivariate Statistics. Shaker-Verlag, Aachen. Voigt, K., Bru¨ggemann, R., Pudenz, S., 2004. Chemical databases evaluated by order theoretical tools. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry 380, 467e474. Voigt, K., Bru¨ggemann, R., Pudenz, S., 2006. A multi-criteria evaluation approach of environmental databases using the Hasse diagram technique (ProRank) software. Environmental Modelling & Software 21 (11), 1587e1597.
Survey of environmental informatics in Europe Werner Pillmann a,*, Werner Geiger b, Kristina Voigt c a ISEP International Society for Environmental Protection, Bechardgasse 24/12, 1030 Vienna, Austria Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Institute of Applied Computer Science, P.O.B. 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany c GSF e National Research Centre for Environment and Health, Ingolstaedter Landstr. 1, 85764 Neuherberg, Germany b
Received 3 May 2006; accepted 3 May 2006 Available online 19 June 2006
Abstract The annual EnviroInfo conferences held for almost 20 years now build a platform to disseminate methods and results in Environmental Informatics. This includes information processing in environmental protection and research as well as informatics applications in the field of environmentally sound technologies and related fields. The Technical Committee (TC), Informatics for Environmental Protection of the German Society for Informatics (GI) has organized these annual conferences in five European countries. The theme of the EnviroInfo 2005 conference, Networking Environmental Information, provided a new opportunity to review the mosaic of Environmental Informatics approaches. This article provides a survey of research results, information sources and newly developed applications in this field. Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Environmental Informatics; Environmental information processing; Environmental Information Systems; EnviroInfo conferences
1. Introduction Environmental problems in the 1980s resulted in an increased ecological awareness in Europe, which considerably enhanced political and scientific activities for the protection of the environment. In the science sector, a rapidly growing community conceived new computer applications for decision making and information exchange in the field of Abbreviations: DPSIR, Driving force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response; EDSS, Environmental Decision Support System; EEA, European Environment Agency (Copenhagen); EI, Environmental Informatics; EIONET, European Information and Observation NETwork; EIS, Environmental Information System; EMAS, Eco-Management and Audit Scheme; Eurostat, Statistical Office of the European Union; GAO, United States Government Accounting Office; geinÒ, German Environmental Information Network; GEMET, General European Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus; GIS, Geographic Information System; HDT, Hasse Diagram Technique; METEOR, Method of Evaluation by Order Theory; OECD, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; SuperThes, Thesaurus development and maintenance software; UDK, Umweltdatenkatalog (Environmental Data Catalogue). * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ43 1 715 2828; fax: þ43 1 713 4131. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (W. Pillmann), [email protected]. de (W. Geiger), [email protected] (K. Voigt). 1364-8152/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2006.05.008
environmental protection. Activities in the field of Computer Science applied to environmental research and protection are denoted by the term ‘‘Environmental Informatics’’ (EI). The EI community continually addresses new and challenging topics in the interface between the fields of Informatics (Computer Science) and Environmental Sciences. While this community was being established, the Technical Committee (TC) Informatics for Environmental Protection of the German Society for Informatics (GI) served as a major platform and motor. Apart from several other activities, the TC organizes the annual international conference on environmental Informatics e EnviroInfo. In view of the 20th anniversary of EnviroInfo, which will be celebrated in 2006 in Graz/Austria, this contribution shall give a survey of the European developments in EI. To illustrate the large number of fields that make up environmental information, a model of ‘‘the environment’’ will be presented. Then the system will be extended into a model for sustainable development (Pillmann, 2005). Using this conceptual structure, an overview of the contributions to the 19th EnviroInfo conference held 2005 in Brno, Czech Republic, will be given. Finally three selected examples will provide insight into the
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applications of information exchange and informatics in the environmental sector.
Technical Committee GI-FA 4.6 Informatics for Environmental Protection
2. A history of Environmental Informatics 2.1. Environmental information policy in Europe A few pioneering scientists alarmed by environmental emergencies and disasters developed an early concept of ‘‘the environment‘‘ in the 1970ies. The accumulation of environmental research findings and detailed measurements of environmental pollution prompted media reports, and thus boosted environmental awareness and brought political responses despite the opposition from many established interest groups. Improved awareness of environmental burdens stimulated organizational changes in governments, the establishment of national Environmental Protection Agencies and the foundation of new non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Environmental changes were recognized and findings on the interactions between society and the natural environment have become increasingly apparent. Within the last two decades environmentally relevant effects such as the increasing amount of waste and hazardous waste, environmental pollution and disasters (e.g. Seveso and Chernobyl) are recognizable for the public as problems and threats. The right to access environmental information (‘‘Public Access to Environmental information’’ Directive 90/313/EEC, 2003/4/EC), originally reserved for governments, improved the public’s insight into environmental information and obliged politicians to support environmental plans and enact a broad spectrum of legislative measures. ˚ rhus A further step was introduced especially with the ‘‘A Convention’’ on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental ˚ rhus, Matters (Ministerial Conference 23e25 June, 1998 in A Denmark), adopted by 39 countries, the EU and signed by 40 states (Jan. 2006). In particular, two of the three directives concerning access to environmental information and public participation in environmental decision making were supposed to be implemented in national law by February and June 2005 respectively. The 6th EU Environmental Action Programme ‘‘Our Future, Our Choice’’ (2002) recognized that we must decide on policies based on sound science. This is also reflected in the 6th EU Framework Research Programme (FP), which focuses on e.g. Climate Change, Biodiversity, Health and Resources. 2.2. Development of the scientific community of Environmental Informatics Up until the mid-1980ies, there was no scientific community specializing in information technology for environmental purposes. Those active in the field either followed IT communities independent of special areas of use, such as database systems, real-time computing or Geographic Information Systems (GIS), or joined specific areas of application, such as
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Informatics for Environmental Protection
Environmental Information Systems in Business
Simulation in Environmental and Geological Sciences
(general)
Fig. 1. Structure of the Technical Committee (2006).
environmental planning, environmental chemistry or forestry science, just to name a few. Developments such as forest damage in Europe and events like the Chernobyl reactor accident triggered a growing awareness in European societies as well as in other countries in the course of the Eighties of the hazards threatening the environment and, as a consequence, the natural basis of human life. This change of attitude resulted in activities such as UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) on an international level, and in a growing use of information technology for environmental purposes on a national level, especially by governments and administrations. At the initiative of Andreas Jaeschke and Bernd Page, a first specialized colloquium (for German-speaking countries) on ‘‘Informatics Applications in the Environmental Sector’’ was organized in Karlsruhe (Jaeschke and Page, 1986). It was attended by approx. 40 participants from research, public authorities and industry; it constituted the nucleus of the new scientific EI community in German-speaking countries. A Working Group on ‘‘Informatics for Environmental Protection’’ was founded in 1987 within the German ‘‘Gesellschaft fu¨r Informatik’’ (GI, Society of Informatics) in an effort to establish continuity and improvement in communication among the participants and to broaden the community. That Working Group was upgraded into a permanent Technical Committee the next year (Fig. 1). Since then, the Committee has been mainly organizing the annual Enviroinfo conference publishing a newsletter for the community establishing special interest groups and working groups to handle specific topics and organizing one or more TC meetings annually. For internal communication within the community, a newsletter was established in 1988 (mainly written in German), which can be found on the TC’s Website1. The annual conference has been attended by more and more participants numbering between 250 and 600 each year. What began as an annual symposium held in German, rapidly developed into a pan-European, international conference. The 19th conference in the series was held in Brno, Czech Republic, on September 7e9, 2005 (see Section 5.1 for details). 1
http://www.iai.fzk.de/Fachgruppe/GI/welcome.eng.html.
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The main communication and distribution medium is the proceedings volumes published for every conference. This application-oriented scientific documentation reflects new developments in the EI community. Thus far 30 proceedings volumes with 1500 papers on 14,000 pages are available. The papers in the proceedings are peer-reviewed by at least two members of the international program committee established for each conference. Some proceeding volumes can be accessed via the WWW.2 Apart from these basic activities, several textbooks have been written by members of the EI community over the past two decades. One of the first basic textbooks was entitled ‘‘Umweltinformatik’’ and edited by Bernd Page and Lorenz Hilty in 1994. A second edition was published soon after the first one (Page and Hilty, 1995). An international textbook edited by Nicholas Avouris and Bernd Page followed soon after (Avouris and Page, 1995). Two important books concerning one of the basic topics of EI, namely environmental databases and environmental information systems were published by Gu¨nther (1998) and Rautenstrauch and Patig (2001), respectively. A recent attempt to extend the focus from environment to sustainable development in general was made by Hilty et al. (2004). An approach to quantify the impact of information and communication technologies on sustainability was developed in a recent project (Hilty et al., 2006). This is only a small sample of available background material concerning EI. 2.3. Scientific environmental challenges and public awareness The EI community has always aimed at addressing new and challenging topics in environmental sciences in combination with computer science. These challenges are e.g. Climate Change, Nature and Biodiversity, Sustainable Production and Consumption, Environmental Health and Awareness Raising, the Management of Natural Resources, Effective Environmental Policy Measures and Legislation, addressed in the Management Plan 2006 of the Directorate-General for the Environment of the European Union and activities of the European Environment Agency; see Annual Report (EEA, 2005a). The Environment and Climate Change are also included in the draft themes of the 7th Framework Programme in the section ‘‘Cooperation’’, Information and Communication Technologies. However the authors’ personal experience cast doubt on whether conservative research programs and networks can adequately integrate social sciences with environmental sciences and computer science so as to foster sustainability. Apart from the European research community, decisionmakers have surveyed the opinions of voters in the Eurobarometer series 1974e2005.3 For instance in Eurobarometer 63 (2005), one of the questions posed to the 28,340 citizens interviewed in 28 European countries concerned the two 2 3
http://enviroinfo.isep.at/Past_Contributions.htm. http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/standard_en.htm.
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most important issues their respective countries were facing. Unemployment, the economic situation, crime and health care were the four highest ranked issues, while environment came in at only 12th place with 4% of the mentions. Special reports on the public’s opinions on environmental issues also exist such as ‘‘The attitudes of European citizens towards environment’’ (Eurobarometer 217, 2005). One of several results shows that 73% agreed that environmental conditions influence the quality of life and 88% approve the statement ‘‘policy makers should take environmental concerns into account when deciding in other policy areas such as the economy and employment‘‘. 3. A model of the human-environment interaction In order to get a deeper insight into the work of the EI community, we have to understand the basic input and output systems of our environment. Starting with ‘‘The Environment’’, Fig. 2 shows a system diagram of inputs to and outputs from the environment. Human influences and natural effects cause environmental changes in several spheres, which can be observed and condensed into indicators and other types of environmental information. The ‘‘social environment’’ is included here due to its important influence on the environment in terms of poverty, hunger, social exclusion, aging and unemployment as indicators of living conditions. An impressive number of indicator sets exists to describe this I/O system. From an environmental perspective the EEA environmental indicators (EEA, 2005b) are an important collection. The OECD‘s set of core indicators is often referenced; local and urban sets complete the indicator landscape. A US perspective can be seen in the report ‘‘Environmental Indicators e Better Coordination is Needed to Develop Environmental Indicator Sets That Inform Decisions’’ (GAO, 2004). In preparing this report, the US Government Accountability Office GAO estimates that the annual cost to the federal government of collecting environmental information is at least US$ 600 million. In general, the existing indicators show patterns and trends, but they do not provide explanations and they cannot be designed to serve all the different essential spheres. 3.1. Driving force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) and beyond The debate on sustainable development involves an overwhelming amount of information. Taking the European Statistical Office Eurostat as an example of this, we see that its Website offers 6086 tables with time series from almost every sphere of life. One way commonly used to describe the environment is the Driving force-Pressure-State-ImpactResponse (DPSIR) model. It is frequently used by the European Environment Agency (EEA) and by international organizations dealing with environmental information. Such a systemic approach is suitable for describing the time dependence of environmental processes. Applications of systems
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Natural influences on:
air water soil climate animals phytotopes;
natural disasters
Man-made influences
Resource use air emission water pollution noise industrial activities waste dumping energy consumption landscape changes Legislation internat. agreements governmental aid tax relief etc.
Data and information on the environment, predominantly pressures
Air, climate Water, Soil Humans, animals, plants Ecosystems Abiotic environment Landscape Technosphere Problem areas Resource consumption Air pollution, waste Climate change Biodiversity Chemicals Transport Sealing of soils Noise Ozone depletion Radiation etc.
Social environment Living & working conditions; recreation
Emission/pollution concentration SO2, NOx, Ozone, greenhouse gases particulate matter (PM10), nitrates in drinking water
noise level; contamination of soils; natural disasters use of resources etc. Indicators, indexes (land use, biodiversity recycling etc.)
Effects on human health food, water, soil, forests, materials, cultural assets economy etc. World population wealth/poverty unemployment hunger ...
Fig. 2. Input/output system environment: Influences and effects.
analysis methods and simulation for industrial and environmental studies are closely associated with names such as J.W. Forrester, E. Pestel and especially Meadows et al. (1993). Later F. Vester stimulated a discussion of the systemic nature of environmental processes with ‘‘The Art of Interconnected Thinking’’ (Vester, 2005) and ‘‘Our World: an Interconnected System’’. H. Bossel started in 1998 with ‘‘Earth at a crossroad’’, a descriptive model of the world in which he included economic, environmental, social, governmental and infrastructure elements in an interconnected system (Bossel, 1998). Fig. 3 represents an attempt to describe ‘‘sustainable development’’ from an environmental focus, using a system structure in an input/output model representation. The arrows running along the outside represent communication links between the economy, the natural and man-made environments (the technosphere) and consumers/voters (Pillmann, 2002). In this structural diagram the human impacts on the environment are embedded as well as goals e.g. pollution reduction, national environmental action plans, Local Agenda 21, Integrated Product Policy (IPP), and the Eco Management and Auditing Scheme (EMAS). The voters and private sector interests influence politics, government administrations, industry, services and households. Appropriate legislation and political measures such as taxes fostering environmentally friendly technologies along with information, research and environmental communication, limit the impact of enterprises, services and citizens on the environment.
4. The state of and trends in Environmental Informatics Most of the subjects addressed above are treated in one way or the other in the continuing work of the European EI community. An in-depth survey of activities can be obtained from the proceedings of the EnviroInfo conference series. A list of all conferences and publications is available at the Website of the Technical Committee.4 4.1. The structure of contributions to EnviroInfo 2005 The 19th conference in the conference series, EnviroInfo 2005, was held in Brno, Czech Republic, on September 7e9, 2005 (Hrebicek and Racek, 2005). The conference featured 145 contributions in the field of EI. An overview of the topics of the conference can be gained, and the practical relevance of the content of EnviroInfo 2005 in the pursuit of sustainable development can be demonstrated, when the topics of the conference are compared with the fundamental structure of the model in Fig. 3. Fig. 4 shows the information in the form of the main topics of EnviroInfo papers. This type of graphic representation provides an impression of how the manifold topics of the EnviroInfo 2005 are put together to form a coherent whole. 4.1.1. Dissemination of environmental information EI merged telecommunications and environmental information processing with scientific research and applications in 4
http://www.iai.fzk.de/Fachgruppe/GI/.
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Environment Technospere
Economy
Ressources
Enterprises
Taxes; Financial support
Natural
Environment
Products Pollution Waste
Public Households
Enviro nme infoma ntal tion
Information generation and distribution
ta
Legislation
Da
Politics, EU Administration
Environmental Informatics
Pillmann W. (2005)
Fig. 3. Systems diagram of the social, economic and natural environments, interlinked by information flow.
government and business. Within the 4th and 5th Framework Research Programmes, the European Commission supported the development of what was then called ‘‘Telematics’’ applications. Activities of the European Environment Agency fostered the dissemination of scientific and application-oriented environmental information and the implementation of Web technologies for EIONET, the Environmental Information and Observation Network in Europe. Countrywide, innovative environmental information systems such as geinÒ, the German Environmental Information Network5, the new version PortalU (Vo¨gele, 2005), the EEA information resources6 and Envirowindows7 are examples of contributions fostering public access to environmental information.
4.1.2. Metadata and the Semantic Web The concept of metadata was introduced in order to provide orientation in a space of continuously growing data and information. Metadata provides information about data, but does not include the data itself. Early applications were the Environmental Data Catalogue (Umweltdatenkatalog, UDK) developed in a cooperation of German speaking countries and environmental authorities, and the Catalogue of Data Sources (CDS) assembled on the European level. An innovative way to get access to (environmental) information is the World Wide Web and its ‘‘successor’’, the Semantic Web. The goal of the Semantic Web initiative is to create a universal medium for the exchange of data8. It is about the data currently in relational databases, XML documents, spreadsheets and proprietary format data files e all of which would be useful to have access to as one huge database (Berners-Lee, 2005). The German Federal Environment Agency UBA Berlin/Dessau developed a Semantic Network Service [SNS] for the German Environmental Information Network geinÒ. Furthermore the application of a Gazetteer, 5 6 7 8
http://www.gein.de/index.html. http://dataservice.eea.eu.int/dataservice/. http://ewindows.eu.org. http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/.
automatic indexing and a calendar of environmentally relevant events was covered.9 4.1.3. Environmental knowledge in the private sector The Eco Management and Auditing Scheme EMAS and the series of ISO 14001 standards (Environmental Management Systems) are stimulating the development of environmental knowledge within enterprises. Results from a worldwide statistical survey of EMAS and ISO 14001 sites are presented in Peglau (2005). The specific sites certified by EMAS in EU states can be accessed at the EMAS Website.10 The annually increasing numbers show that environmental management is being increasingly established in the private sector. A survey of companies’ experience with ISO 14001 in Germany demonstrates that an ever-growing number of companies are going beyond the statutory requirements and reducing environmental impacts through their voluntary introduction of an environmental management system. 5. Environmental Informatics case studies 5.1. Development of the Environmental Information System of Baden-Wu¨rttemberg The Baden-Wu¨rttemberg Environmental Information System (EIS BW) has a long history, and has often acted as a pioneer in German federal and state environmental information systems. At the very first EnviroInfo conference in 1986, a paper dealt with the basic design of the system. Important aspects of the development of environmental information systems can be shown by the example of the EIS BW (Mayer-Fo¨ll et al., 2004). EIS BW is the central tool of the state for providing environmental information and efficient access to that information. It encompasses the major environmental information systems in the state for the administration and for the public, providing a framework rather than constituting a monolithic system. 9 10
http://www.semantic-network.de/doc_intro.html?lang¼en. http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/emas/activities/index_en.htm.
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Politics e-Government Administration Private sector International organisations NGO's Public
Networks for Sustainability
Technosphere
EEA EIONET
Resources
Water Climate Air quality Waste Energy
Environmental management Urban environment
Indicators Environment health & security Corporate sustainability communication & reporting
e-Government e-Learning
ata tad Me
De cis ion
su p
gement Information Mana po rt
Early warning
Knowledge management
Environmental Informatics in the 7th EU framework Programme
Thesauri Ontologies Semantic Web
Web portals
raphic Geog ation Modeling m r o f n simulation I ems INSPIRE nd computing Syst a
l Environmental nta information me s n c systems nviro tisti rin E sta ee n g& gi nsin y En e se ecolog s t o m Rem scape ste d Lan n Sy
o mati nfor I l a t men Environ
g
Eco-Informa Special Foundation Session
In ap form pli ati ca cs tio ns
Environmental information
Pillmann W .(2005)
Fig. 4. Systems diagram with main sessions contents of EnviroInfo 2005.
The EIS BW has been developed in several generations. The first generation (as from 1983) focused mainly on individual, isolated data collections and information systems. In a second generation (1987e1994), overall data management and evaluation systems were realized, e.g., the RIPS pool for geographic data and the MEROS database for measured data. In a third and fourth generation (as from 1995), multi-usable basic components and services have been developed, e.g. the multi-usable disy Cadenza framework and the general Report¨ KO data ing System based on Cadenza and the common DB-U model (Mayer-Fo¨ll et al., 2005). In addition, the systems and data have been integrated even more. This development was associated with fundamental technical changes, some few basic features of which are outlined here: e An important system overcoming the ‘‘data cemetery’’ problem of the first generation of the EIS BW was (and is) the Environmental Data Catalog, which constitutes a metadata system and provides an overview of the information resources available in the state (see Section 5.2). e As the Internet and administrative Intranets developed, Web-based systems like the AlfaWeb contaminated sites information system (Geiger et al., 1999) became more and more important, allowing direct access to information. e A further step in the evolution was (and is) the development of environmental portals, such as the Baden-Wu¨rttemberg Environmental Portal (see Schlachter et al., 2004). These portals offer a central access point to the environmental information in the state and central search functions with links leading to the information wanted. e In addition, the dedicated systems have been equipped with Web services. This makes for a better distribution of functions (e.g. dedicated document server, database server, geodata server, etc.), and for easier functional
integration, as in the Theme Park Environment (Du¨pmeier and Geiger, 2006). Originally, EIS BW contained almost exclusively systems supporting political planning and decision making as well as execution by the administration. More and more national and European obligations to publicize environmental information as well as the growing importance of public participation have made information systems for the public increasingly important. The information systems for the public can be subdivided roughly into three types (Geiger et al., 2005): e Systems for making available ongoing measured data (air data including ozone data, radioactivity levels, water levels, etc.) and current forecasts (e.g. flood forecasts). e Systems primarily designed to make accessible administrative data available in documents, databases, and GIS, as for example the XfaWeb information systems11 with technical documents or the UDO system12 with structured data and maps. e Systems with the primary purpose of enhancing environmental awareness in the public. Only few such systems have been established to date, e.g. the Theme Park Environment. As requirements increase, so do the potential costs of development of environmental information systems, which is a severe challenge especially at a time characterized by growing budget restrictions. In an effort to develop powerful solutions in an economic way, better cooperation was promoted among the federal, state and regional authorities for developing and 11 12
http://www.xfaweb.baden-wuerttemberg.de/. http://www2.lfu.baden-wuerttemberg.de/brs-web/.
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maintaining these systems. Over the years, especially AJA/ KEWA R&D cooperation (project executing organization: Ministry of the Environment of Baden-Wu¨rttemberg [UM BW]) and ‘‘EIS Cooperation’’ were launched. After the two initiators, i.e. German Federal Ministry of the Environment (BMU) and UM BW, gradually all German state ministries of the environment have joined the ‘‘EIS Cooperation’’ (Mayer-Fo¨ll et al., 2005). 5.2. Multilingual thesauri In view of the planned enlargement of the European Union, additional language barriers will have to be overcome. The multilingual support addressed here is also important for environmental experts. Progress in multilingualism was made during the development of GEMET supported by the EEA, offering more than 5000 terms in up to 22 languages.13 The UDK Thesaurus offers German environmental terminology (22,629 terms) with the English translations of 11,531 terms. It was regularly updated and controlled by an editorial board until the end of 200414 and will be distributed 2006 on CD. The UDK Thesaurus is integrated in the newly developed thesaurus maintenance and visualization software SuperTHES.15 There is also a newly created ‘Thesaurus on Emergencies and Disasters’ TED16, a glossary supporting co-operation in accidents, disasters and relief operations. 5.3. Evaluation of environmental databases by multi-criteria assessment approaches Data on environmental chemicals detected in the environment are urgently needed to evaluate the risk these substances pose to human beings and the environment. Furthermore these data are needed to comply with the future environment and chemicals policy in the European Union. Not only commercial data-collections should be searched, but also the Web should be used intensively as a free source of scientific information (Doldi and Bratengeyer, 2005). Several evaluation approaches using environmetrical and chemometrical evaluation methods have been performed in the past. Pesticide resources which can be found on the free Internet were investigated and ranked by mathematical and multivariate statistical methods (Voigt and Welzl, 2002a). A recent publication aims at the evaluation of 12 Internet databases concerning their data-availability for environmental and ecotoxicity parameters (Voigt et al., 2004). Concerning environmental risk assessment the cooperation between scientists and decision makers has to be intensified. Several decision support tools have been developed especially for water resource management and published in Environmental Modelling and Software Bouma et al. (2005), Acreman (2005) and Mysiak et al. (2005) just to name a few examples. 13
http://www.eionet.eu.int/GEMET. http://www.cedar.at/wgr_home.at. 15 http://gis.umweltbundesamt.at/medis. 16 Based on the Australian Emergency Manual Series, http://www.ema. gov.au/. 14
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One approach to generic integration of different Environmental Information Systems (EIS) and Environmental Decision Support Systems (EDSS) tools is discussed by Denzer (2005). The methods introduced by the third author in this special issue of Environmental Modelling & Software are new approaches based on partial ordered sets that can be used to avoid the merging of data and thus preserve important elements of the evaluation and decision making processes (Voigt et al., 2006). These methods are ranking methods called Hasse Diagram Technique (HDT), ProRank (the commercial software of the HDT), Method of Evaluation by Order Theory (METEOR) which originate in discrete mathematics. They concern multi-criteria evaluation methods which can be used as tools to measure information quality, and hence are also applicable to decision making. These tools are often combined with multivariate statistical methods to round off evaluation results. In order to obtain more insight in the methodologies as well as in the applications in environmental sciences, we refer readers to the book ‘‘Order Theoretical Tools in Environmental Sciences’’ (Voigt and Welzl, 2002b). In this special issue of Environmental Modelling & Software an example is presented for the evaluation of 15 environmental and chemical free Internet databases with respect to the existence of data on chemicals in these resources (Voigt et al., 2006). ProRank software (Criterion, 2005) presents a new approach based on partial ordered sets. The consideration of the chemical substances (high-production volume chemicals, pharmaceuticals) in the database x is coded by 0 ¼ not available, or 1 ¼ available. The following sub-sets of the databases are evaluated: Single databases, European versus US databases, and databases which cover chemicals numbering from 2001 to 10,000. The Hasse Diagram Technique reveals the best (maximal objects) and the worst (minimal objects) databases and conflicts among them that arise due to different information content. This is an example of the integration and combination of the different aspects of EI, namely environmental information, environmental information systems and databases, environmental statistics, knowledge management, and decision support (see topics in Fig. 4). Furthermore the subject of environmental chemicals is closely related to their effects and hence to environmental and human health aspects. 6. Conclusion During the past two decades the TC ‘‘Computer Science in Environmental Protection’’ of the German Society for Informatics and, of course, the Environmental Informatics community in general have actively promoted the idea of EI as an interdisciplinary subject in its own right (a combination and integration of computer science, environmental science and approaches to sustainable development). These activities started in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and spread farther into other European countries. More and more international cooperation, e.g. with American, Russian, African and South American colleagues developed. There are close
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relationships to other societies and conferences such as ECOINFORMA (2005), ISESS (2006), the International Environmetrics Society (TIES, 2006) and the I-Know Conference (Tochtermann and Maurer, 2005). The TC is striving to intensify its efforts to actively set up collaborating networks for future projects. Additionally we are aware that we should improve our endeavours to convince stakeholders as well as the general public of the relevance of our activities to their lives. In future, the TC will continue striving to enhance environmental knowledge by linking key research topics, promoting scientific collaboration and education and developing new ways of communicating information among the technical community, policy and decision makers, and the general public. Acknowledgment Special thanks go to Lorenz Hilty and Thomas Ruddy, who supported this work with several helpful suggestions and proof readings. References Acreman, M., 2005. Linking science and decision making: features and experience from environmental river flow setting. Environmental Modelling & Software 20 (2), 99e109. Avouris, N.M., Page, B., 1995. Environmental Informatics, Methodology and Applications of Environmental Information Processing. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dodrecht. Berners-Lee, T., 2005. The Semantic Web e Interview 2005.
Geiger, W., Du¨pmeier, C., Ruchter, M., Schlachter, T., Weidemann, R., Ebel, R., Schmid, E., 2005. Examples of public environmental information systems and portals in Baden-Wu¨rttemberg. Environmental Risk Assessment Systems. e CD ROM Laxenburg. In: Environmental Software Systems: Proc. of the 6th Internat. Symp., Sesimbra, P, May 24e27, vol. 6. International Federation for Information Processing, ISBN 3-901882-21-9. IFIP Conference Series. Gu¨nther, O., 1998. Environmental Information Systems. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Hilty, L.M., Seifert, E., Treibert, R. (Eds.), 2004. Information Systems for Sustainable Development. Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (PA). Hilty, L.M., Arnfalk, P., Erdmann, L., Goodman, J., Lehmann, M., Wa¨ger, P., 2006. The relevance of information and communication technologies for environmental sustainability e a prospective simulation study. Environmental Modelling & Software 21 (11), 1618e1629. Hrebicek, J., Racek, J. (Eds.), 2005. EnviroInfo Brno 2005. Networking Environmental Information. Proc. of the 19th Int. Conf. Informatics for Environmental Protection. Masaryk University in Brno, ISBN 80-2103780-6. ISESS, 2006.
W. Pillmann et al. / Environmental Modelling & Software 21 (2006) 1519e1527 Vester, F., 2005. Die Kunst, vernetzt zu denken (The Art of Interconnected Thinking). Bericht an den Club of Rome. dtv-TB (5. Aufl.). Vo¨gele, T., 2005. A new and flexible architecture for the German Environmental Information Network. In: Hrebicek, J., Racek, J. (Eds.), EnviroInfo Brno 2005, Informatics for Environmental Protection; Networking Environmental Information. Masaryk University in Brno. Voigt, K., Welzl, G., 2002a. Chemical databases: an overview of selected databases and evaluation methods. CD-ROM Review 26, 172e192.
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Voigt, K., Welzl, G., 2002b. Order Theoretical Tolls in Environmental Sciences, Order Theory (Hasse Diagram Technique) Meets Multivariate Statistics. Shaker-Verlag, Aachen. Voigt, K., Bru¨ggemann, R., Pudenz, S., 2004. Chemical databases evaluated by order theoretical tools. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry 380, 467e474. Voigt, K., Bru¨ggemann, R., Pudenz, S., 2006. A multi-criteria evaluation approach of environmental databases using the Hasse diagram technique (ProRank) software. Environmental Modelling & Software 21 (11), 1587e1597.