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- KonferenzbeitragSustainability of Information and Communication Systems (ICS)(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Arndt, Hans-Knud; Lau, Sandra; Strehl, AndreasSustainability of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is one of the main goals of today. The SAP AG phrases this task in the following way: “SAP is committed to improving its own operations to become more sustainable and to delivering customer solutions to improve sustainability on a grand scale.” (SAP AG 2009) Sustainability is first of all related with aspects of economic, environmental and social impacts of organizations (enterprises, service suppliers, administration, academia etc.). Nowadays there is an intensive research in the field of sustainability of information and communication technologies. Mainly the “Green IT”-movement is to be taking into account in this context, which has developed an own industrial-specific trend in this field, yet. But the principle of entirety is to be considered in his classical meaning and therefore sustainability has to be essentially drawn to immaterial goods too – without be limited to that. Hence, we will present a first approach named “Grand Management Information Design” which centers sustainability of information and communication systems (ICS) – on the immaterial layer.
- KonferenzbeitragCurrent Trends in Sustainability Reporting in the Czech Republic(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Hřebíčeka, Jiří; Hájek, Miroslav; Chvátalová, Zuzana; Ritschelová, IvaSustainability reporting has become a mainstream business activity. The Amsterdam Declaration on Transparency and Reporting of the Board of the Global Reporting Initiative from March 2009 told to global leaders from business, labour and civil society declared their belief that the lack of transparency in the existing system for corporate reporting has failed its stakeholders. It brought a new impulse to sustainability reporting on economic, environmental, social and governance performance. The new approach of corporate sustainability reporting is presented in the paper. The development in the area of sustainability reporting in the Czech Republic reflects the overall global world trends. Some large corporations are actively performing sustainability reporting; on the other hand, the relative share of these companies is rather small. The paper also indicates companies group in the Czech Republic that participate on the corporate sustainability reporting and evaluates the state of voluntary reporting in chemical industry.
- KonferenzbeitragFrom Data access to information process in water resource management at basin scale(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Eric, MassonICT developments (i.e. web-based and open-source software) and policies on public access to information (i.e. Aarhus convention and its national transpositions) have significantly increased citizen’s accessibility to environmental data. In the water resource management domain the EU WFD has also include participation processes (e.g. from “basic” citizen to decision makers level) into the implementation of watermass or basin management plans. Thus the situation in Western Europe is that one should have an easy access to environmental data whatever its educational level (from basic level to expert domain) and should “eventually” contribute to a decision making thru a participation process. But many gaps (i.e. technical, educational, political...) and misunderstandings occur between population, stakeholders, experts and decision makers. If the participative process has to cope with those gaps to set an optimal decision many conflicts are emerging thru the role game playing between local people, experts, stakeholders and decision makers. Thus there’s a real need for a minimum education in ICT applied to environmental resources management to optimize the position of citizens (e.g. non decision makers, non stakeholders and non expert people) and the weight of local knowledge in the participative process. This paper analyses three steps of this crucial issue. First a reviewing of different ICT monitoring and sensors applied to water resource management will set a basis of discussion about gaps between data acquisition (e.g. expert data) and local knowledge (e.g. non expert or public web-based data). Second an analysis of information building process using environmental databases and GIS will address technical and educational gaps that exist between experts and non experts (i.e. population, stakeholders, and decision makers) in converting data into quality information for a participative decision making in the water resource domain. Third two educational programs “River 21” based on the DPSIR methodology applied to the Schelde watershed and the “Certificate of Informatics and Internet for future practitioners in the field of environmental and urban planning sustainable management” (i.e. C2i MEAD in French) will presents two tracks contributing to reduce the gaps between experts and non experts to optimize decision making in a participative process applied to water resources management.
- KonferenzbeitragGreen Chemistry / Green Engineering/ Sustainable Information Technology: Common Concepts and Differences(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Voigt, KristinaThese days the terms green and sustainable are proliferating. The positive aspect concerning the extensive use is that sustainability receives an increasing interest in society. It has become a key concern for consumers and industry. However, coming to understand its implications in the context of daily life is difficult. Important fields in the context of sustainability are e.g. Green Chemistry (Anastas 1998), Green Engineering (Anastas 2003a), sustainable information and communication technologies (Hilty 2008), just to name a few scientific topics. The principles of these fields will be presented in the paper. Furthermore, the interaction of these concepts as well as the differences will be addressed. The inclusion of green / sustainable foci in education will be vital in the future. While tremendous benefit has been derived from vision and value statements on the need for sustainability, scientists and engineers understand that change will only occur when sustainable technologies are implemented in industry and disseminated throughout society. To accomplish this transition, the three main areas: academia (education), industry and governments must work more closely together.
- KonferenzbeitragSurvey on the implementation of the environmental information directive in EU Member States(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Pick, Thomas; Pillmann, WernerThe Directive on public access to environmental information (2003/4/EC; AEI-Directive, The European Commission, 2003-1), forms a cornerstone of the European Union’s environmental policy. It requires member states to progressively make available environmental information and disseminate it to the public in order to achieve the widest possible systematic availability and dissemination. The AEI-Directive has been in effect for 6 years now. In the context of the EU FP7 Project “ICT-ENSURE” a survey was conducted on the state of implementation of the AEI-Directive in member states (The European Commission, 2008-2). This paper summarizes the results of this study, which is essentially based on an internet survey. Moreover, following this survey, a questionnaire has been completed in advance for each country which was sent to the publication departments of the Ministries of Environment of the EU 27 for review, correction and completion. Until today 22 countries have responded, 19 of which sent back the reviewed questionnaires. The study shows that all member states use the internet as the main distribution tool for environmental information. Legislation for free access to environmental information is in effect in the majority of the countries. More than 50% transposed the AEI-Directive into national legislation. Germany seems to be the only country which developed a special information system for the implementation of the directive. Furthermore, the study proved that, due to the language barrier, access to environmental information is in most cases restricted to the national level. In conclusion it can be affirmed that the current lack of organisational, technical and semantic harmonisation and interoperability makes it almost impossible to access environmental information on a supra-national level.
- KonferenzbeitragStudy programs in Industrial Environmental Informatics at HTW Berlin (Germany)(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Wohlgemuth, Volker
- KonferenzbeitragMonitoring the Environment with Sensor Web Services(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Jirka, Simon; Remke, AlbertThe human impact on the environment is causing global change, resulting in an increase of natural hazards and depleting natural resources. Real-time information on our man-earth system is essential both in terms of improving our understanding of its condition and dynamics and of enabling more sustainable management of our activities which interact with the environment. Sensor networks are among the most important tools for gathering such (real-time) information. One point focused on by sensor networks is the development of software standards and implementations for web services that facilitate the integration of sensors and sensor data into a wide range of applications. Standardisation of these web services is required because the diversity of sensor concepts and interfaces represents a significant obstacle for the integration of sensor networks into environmental information systems. This paper presents examples how 52° North sensor web services are being used in constructing environmental monitoring systems. 52° North Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software is an international R&D platform aiming at fostering the innovation process in the field of spatial data infrastructures.
- KonferenzbeitragGreen IT in the current recession(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Melcher, KlaasThis paper deals with investment strategies in times of recession in general and with investment into Green IT in particular. One goal is to point out that it is preferable to invest in more efficient technology in the current situation, instead of cutting spendings and; furthermore, this paper intends prove that sustainable investments right now would be advantageous to companies concerning their long term development. The objective of this paper is to show that investment in Green IT is of critical business importance and that it could be dangerous in the long run to disband running projects for short-term cost efficiency. Energy prices may be falling at the moment due to the crisis, but will certainly rise in the future again when the economy recovers. Forecasts already predict that prices will reach ever new heights. However, the last year has shown that energy prices are unpredictable. In summary, the paper shall prove that Green IT is still a topic for every company to invest in right now, especially within the current economic downturn, given its large potential as a cost reducing instrument.
- KonferenzbeitragDownscaling Climate Change Impacts to the Urban Area of Ho Chi Minh City using an Urban Structure Type Approach(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Storch, Harry; Downes, Nigel; Moon, Kiduk; Rujner, HendrikClimate risk arising from both climate variability and change is heterogeneous across a diverse range of spatial scales. At the global scale climate risk is generally assessed to be more acute in the coastal regions of developing and emerging countries which have significant exposure to climate hazards, but is additionally associated with the specific socio-economic context that exacerbates those hazards (Preston et al., 2006). At the national level, various sectors, ecosystems and regional subpopulations within these countries have been identified as being more or less vulnerable to changing future climatic conditions (IPCC, 2001). However, until today only few studies have attempted to explore the spatial heterogeneity of climate risk at smaller spatial scales, such as on the metropolitan or urban scale (Rosenzweig et al., 2000). As part of the research programme 'Sustainable Development of the Megacities of Tomorrow’ by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), a suite of projects is being funded in conjunction with other partners to assess climate change risks and possible adaptation and mitigation strategies at the scale of mega-urban regions. These projects are linked through an emphasis on the integration of knowledge about changes in the climate system together with knowledge over the regional context of urban growth centres in which those changes will occur. These projects are focused, on building energyand climate-efficient urban structures to mitigate climate risk and to enable adaptation strategies on the urban scale. The research project ‘Integrative Urban and Environmental Planning for Adaptation Ho Chi Minh City to Climate Change Sustainable Strategies for Climate-Oriented Urban Structures, Energy-Efficient Housing Typologies and Comprehensive Environmental Protection for Megacities of Tomorrow’ emphasises the impacts of climate change and the identification of adaptation strategies for ameliorating those risks, including constraints and barriers on decision making.
- KonferenzbeitragVisualising sustainability communication with Sankey diagrams – a viable approach?(Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools, 2009) Nuttbohm, Klaas; Fischer, Lina; Muckenfuss, Lisa; Baiboks, SaskiaCommunicating the idea of Sustainable Development is being hindered through the complexity and variety of the contents it includes. The difficulty of presenting such contents, which are often combined with huge amounts of complex data, to people which are often not familiar with it brings up the necessity to use visualisations that are directly addressed to the visual absorption of humans. The objective of this paper is to discuss whether Sankey Diagrams as a form of visualisation, can be used to support Sustainability Communication. The toolbox for this analysis is based on semiotics in symbol theory. This paper identifies three semiotic key-factors and discusses two of them in order to judge sankey diagrams as a viable approach for sustainability communication. Furthermore basic directions in designing sankey diagrams are shown concerning the semiotic approach. By using semiotic tools sankey diagrams can be designed to further elements of the concept of sustainable development, especially understanding complexity, developing key competencies and realising potentials. Nonetheless the integration of the complexity of this concept in all its dimension is hard to impart concerning the compatibility of quantitative and qualitative content.