CASA Working Paper 7

From Environmental Information Systems to Environmental Informatics - Evolution and Meaning

Environmental Information and Environmental Information Systems play a major role in environmental decision making. The development of these systems is tightly connected to the environmental awareness of the last three decades. This working paper is a review of the historical development and state-of-the-art of environmental information systems. It focuses on the creation, management and use of Environmental Information Systems (EISs).

It is based on the World Wide Web and computerised databases research of the term "environmental information". The paper explores the typology of EISs and examined the common definitions of them in the light of these findings. The major issues in this paper include:

• The concepts of data, information and knowledge in EISs
• The connection between EISs and Geographical Information Systems (GISs).
• Problems and obstacles to the development of EISs.
• Scale, jurisdiction and EISs.
• And finally, the emerging demand for public access to environmental information.

The paper includes a list of major WWW sites that are relevant to this field.

This working paper is available as a PDF. The file size is 175KB.

Authors: Muki Haklay

Publication Date: 1/5/1999

Download working paper No. 7.