Konferenzbeitrag
ICT for the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources with particular reference to Water Resources
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2009
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Shaker Verlag
Zusammenfassung
At present there is a worldwide crisis of natural resources, in particular of water resources, with emerging problems even in water abundant mountain areas. ICT is relevant to protecting water quantity, water quality, enabling water predictions, water management, and aquatic biodiversity. According to Tongia (2005), ICT can help in assessing water supply adequacy, modelling different supply and technology alternatives and factor in different usage technologies. This includes the development of dynamic Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for identifying water availability, storage, transmission and distribution, monitoring of water quality, optimization of the allocation between different water uses (e.g. treated drinking water, agriculture etc) and water use management at a societal level including distribution systems (loss reduction) and utilisation efficiency. For ICT to be applied successfully, stakeholders must have access to information for informed decision-making and they must have open access to a range of different models and solutions. The availability of water is subject to human decisions that can be highly erratic and market-oriented and are often only roughly quantifiable or not quantifiable at all at the same temporal scale. The lack of ICT in this domain not only endangers water availability for human consumption but more so the minimal amount of residual water left for the environment. This is due to the difference between transferring data from measuring equipment to storage and processing tools (i.e. from machine to machine and back again) against transferring data from qualitative questionnaires to interfaces and then to storage and processing tools (from humans to interfaces to machines to interface to humans). For basin-wide use of water resources, the problem is even more complex, since ICT considers river basins or catchments as closed systems, whereas they are in reality open systems, subject to variable environmental conditions, e.g. choices and decisions of inhabitants that can either be local or external.
The economic importance of ICT in water resources is multiple. Domains that are most advanced include hydroelectric production, flood control, irrigation and cooling water supply. Less developed domains include fishery, tourism, etc. The economic importance of ICT in natural resources for tourism is also potentially large. It is applied mostly in technically dominated areas such as snow-making or discharge release for rafting, but less so in the qualitative data domains. Unfortunately, ICT is often trapped in a viscous cycle in economical terms. Thus, as the examples above demonstrate, ICT is often only applied in domains that are already economically important in order to increase their economical potential. On the other hand, in economically poorly developed issues, the interest for ICT is often not high. Thus ICT research needs to identify areas that have potential and evaluate the potential impact that ICT can make. ICT is of high relevance to public service, decision makers; politicians and other stakeholders since it is a means of monitoring, classifying, analysing and diffusing information according to the most modern technological standards. This is particularly important for mountainous areas with reduced accessibility.
Communication networks help professionals in mountain regions to counter natural obstacles inherent to mountain territories. These tools have considerable potential in the field of general services and yet it is in mountain areas that these networks are the least developed. The most important role that ICT plays in mountain territories is the development of internet. This is not understood or seen as a perspective for sustainable development at the local level but simply as a means of reducing gaps and handicaps. Therefore the link between ICT and sustainable development is only rarely achieved. Often, the connection is not made between the existence of work tools related to ICT for sustainable development of natural resources. This is mainly related to a lack of awareness raising in this area. Also, there is a certain exclusiveness of ICT application s to those already working or trained in this area, as opposed to those users that should benefit from it but are not yet connected to the ICT-market. There are considerable differences in the application of ICT in the field of sustainable development and use of natural resources within the Alps as related to the rest of Europe and within east and west European countries. Countries such as Switzerland, Austria, S. Germany and the eastern parts of the Italian Alps are well interconnected via ICT for the development of water resources and natural reserves, whereas western and eastern alpine countries have a low level of ICT application. This is mainly due to the sequence and systematic development of natural resources via monitoring, modelling and predication. Those countries that have not yet developed a sound monitoring system for natural resources threatened by extinction or depletion, do not yet have the basis for modelling and prediction and can therefore not yet feed the ICT-based systems and data bases. Those countries that have large quantities of data available electronically necessarily have to apply ICT to manage them and further process them. On the whole, geographical and topographical differences have a strong influence on the intensity of use of ICT, thus for example, the Netherlands has a much higher level of ICT interconnectivity than most of the alpine states.
In future, the main research demand includes:
• improving the incompatibilities encountered at the interfaces between qualitative and quantitative information and data systems.
• developing methods of overcoming the problem of integrating “routine” data versus “non-routine” data. This is closely connected to the problems of how to cope with non-uniform qualitative data discussed above. Improvements could be made in finding simplifications and shortcuts for converting qualitative data in an objective way to quantitative data.
• solving the language problem at the local scale (many stakeholders do not master English and are therefore exempt from using ICT)
• dealing with sustainable development as an “open system” rather than a neatly defined “closed system”.
• bridging the gap between the existence of information and communication technology and its application
• applying ICT actively rather than passively. This requires permanent personnel responsible for the sustainability ofand trouble-shooting within the system
• accustoming all sectors of society to use ICT and not just top level managers and planners
• enabling the transition from traditional concerted efforts in groups to electronic means
• developing methods of homogenisation of ICT
• integration of socio-economic experts and stakeholders confronted with every day problems for the development and application of ICT
• developing eco-technologies (with reference to the key area treated in this report: e.g. environmentally friendly methods of water purification i.e. non-chemical or environmentally friendly methods of using natural resources for alpine tourism e.g. alternatives to artificial snow production).