EnviroInfo 2012: EnviroInfo Dessau 2012, Part 2: Open Data and Industrial Ecological Management
Copyright 2012 Shaker Verlag Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1248-4
IT-for-Green: Environment, Energy, and Resource Management
with Next-Generation EMIS
Jorge Marx Gómez 1
Abstract
IT-for-Green aims to make businesses and their processes more environmentally friendly by means of information
processing. Currently implemented EMIS do not cope with the requirements from the sustainability debate, because
EMIS must already put into action during product development in an environmentally integrated production as well
as in strategic decision making and not – as done so far - only as end-of-pipe solution to the mere end of pipe documentation of environmental effects. Thus, great importance to timely recognition of cause-effect relationships has to
be given for proactively assessing environmental impact. Significant potential for preventive environmental protection remains otherwise unused.
1.
Current situation and problem
A company environmental information system (EMIS) is an organizational and technical system to the
systematic collection, processing and provision of environmental information in a company. EMIS basically have the same scope of application as business information systems (BIS). The information infrastructures of companies have changed steadily according to the development of information and communication technologies, to provide information to the increased volume of information and the extended interest groups available (Rautenstrauch, 1999).
The guiding principle of sustainable development has experienced an increased influence on the public,
politics and society in particular since Agenda 21, is reflected in an increased effort by companies on environmental report, economic and social aspects. However the concepts developed from the research of
EMIS does not have at this point to apply in practice. The non-transposition of EMIS therefore has a great
importance for the IT for Green project, which would show the structures for a new-generation EMIS and
their implementation by means of a network of industry partners.
From today's perspective, a number of different causes can be designated for the previous failure. A
primary reason seems but to be, to establish, that is the functionality of the EMIS developed until today in
essentially only the target required saw, the laws and conformity to standards of operational environmental
action and to hedge (People, 2001).
In the survey of the Federal Ministry for environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety "Environmental awareness in Germany 2010" has the public awareness in an open question to the most important political responsibilities (Borgstedt, Christ, & Reusswig, 2010) with 20 per cent in first or second
place called the environmental and climate protection and is thus in a current ranking according to labour
market policy and economic and financial policy named (Borgstedt et al., 2010, p. 16).
Currently employed EMIS are therefore mainly the reporting obligations to State authorities after and/or
support the use and the implementation of standardized environmental management systems (e.g. ISO
14001). In the operational sphere the development and deployment of such systems are assigned to thus
only the operational management.
1
University of Oldenburg, Department of Computing Science, Uhlhornsweg 84, D-26129 Oldenburg
2.
Introduction of Next Generation EMIS
The current goals of EMIS can be summarized with avoidance or reduction of negative impacts on the environment caused by business activities. Thus, this orientation on output can be summarized and is reflected in the use of end-of-pipe technologies.
The current business situation and the requirements from the various interest groups show that at this
point a proactive approach must be supported by EMIS, comparable to the additive environmental protection, which has evolved from an end-of-pipe approach to an integrated approach. This would counteract
also reviews which attest to late role in the process of control of environmental information and the planning of environmental decision-making in the company current EMIS based on the output orientation.
Traditional definitions support mainly the implementation of the operational objectives and - connected the pursuit of isolated and not harmonized targets. In sum, these circumstances led to a failure of existing
EMIS for the acceptance in the enterprise.
If you look at the past research approaches to the orientation of the EMIS, so is a clear, that the research
published under the rubrum EMIS dealing often only with certain aspects of integrated environmental information system and not such as, for example, the ERP in information systems and business intelligence
systems provide enterprise-wide functionality. On the other hand, it has to be pointed out that the information systems outlined in these publications overwhelmingly have no proactive character. Simplistic (and a
little polemically) allows to ascertain that these information systems are not so designed to reduce operational environmental damage and disruption, or even to avoid. Rather, these systems - serve as, for example, almost all waste management systems - to (efficiently) to deal with already existing environment. The
very important for an application-oriented scientific discipline issue will be the third hardly after the successful transfer of research results into business practice. A new direction is therefore urgently needed
(Schaltegger et al., 2007) (Wohlgemuth, 2008).
An application-oriented science this current state is as extremely unsatisfactory to call, especially as
was postulated that both the science of corporate environmental informatics as well as their artifacts, the
EMIS, the goal will follow, to harmonize operational economy and ecology. This harmonization must
summarize to the output and if applicable its recycling - all aspects of the entire chain - from the input of
all transformation processes and as a holistic orientation in the implementation of EMIS of the next generation. Future EMIS must focus on the sustainability debate and contribute to the long-term preservation
of nature and promoting the economic and social living conditions by initiating economic, ecological and
social processes.
3.
Project IT-for-Green
In the project IT-for-Green (http://www.it-for-green.eu), therefore an EMIS of the next generation is being
developed based on three integrated modules that will constitute the entire life cycle of the input side (energy efficiency measurement of used ICT) of the transformation (logistics and sustainable product development) to the output side (communications and sustainability reports). The overall architecture provides a
collection of so-called Green Web Services. These will form the basis of a service platform (Green Service Mall) in the future. To achieve these objectives, the authority from six companies, municipal representatives and four universities are bundled in the project (Marx Gómez, Strahringer & Teuteberg 2010).
A crucial role in the sustainable development comes to the control efficiency of IT. Through the use of
intelligent networked systems and processes, new EMIS on the strategic enterprise level will set up, strategically relevant environmental information and decision algorithms to provide and allow an assessment
of sustainable development paths, critical to success resource prices or volatile energy markets. Therefore
associated risks, as well as strategically relevant, system dynamics cause effect relationships between economic, environmental and social indicators can be made visible.
Copyright 2012 Shaker Verlag Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1248-4
The goal of EMIS of the next generation is recognize the entire IT of a company as resource guiding,
integrative system for intelligent and strategic control and in this way to realize an opportunity / risk efficient, strategic environmental management and thereby to enable sustainable shareholder value. Such information systems will gain a broader operational relevance and back again in the field of strategic management.
So what brings forward the company environmental Informatics, is their focus and expansion on the basis of the results of the sustainability debate. The company automatic so far unused to this in the result
(because did not recognize) options to reduce costs by increasing material and energy generated.
4.
A modular concept and strategy
Now, with the project IT for Green, the development of corporate environmental information system of
the next generation started. We develop three software modules with the associated services and process
models that include the entire product life cycle. In this way a chance/risk efficient, strategic environmental management is realized and thus sustainable value allows.
The first module will deal with the measurement of the efficiency of the ICT infrastructure and the figure of the corresponding energy on the individual products and their life stages. This contribution to the
environmental impact (and also the costs) is currently often neglected because they are not quantified for
lack of data. As a first step, an appropriate measurement infrastructure is designed, ranging through the
data to further processing services, where an assignment of consumption is carried out by means of
mathematical modeling of the server rooms. In this way it is possible, in addition to the implied on the efficiency of technology itself also conclusions about the impact of product design to the ICT (scope 2 and
scope 3 emissions) to achieve, which achieves a lifting of the limitations of previous Green IT approach.
The second module will improve the cross-company material and energy efficiency in production and
logistics. Currently lacks the possibility of comparing the different environmental factors (preferably CO2
footprint) of different alternatives in production planning, product design, for the supply chain or for
transport options to be able to face. Determining and assigning environmental impacts specific to production processes and transport alternatives is problematic currently. Assignments of environmental indicators, strongly relating to individual choices or alternatives, will make possible personal responsibility to
the operational (decision-making) level and the introduction of a sustainable development culture within
the company.
The third module is geared towards the semi-automated and dialogue-oriented reporting to environmental management. It combines services prepare sizes from the two other modules to communicate with
various stakeholders in the form of a report which measured and calculated (model). For example, here is
the production of (dialog-based) sustainability reports on a portal to science. But attention by supporting
innovative feedback systems, which make the environmental impact of own actions in business daily immediately tangible and thus immediately aware is also the company's internal communication.
The overall architecture provides for a collection of so-called Green Web Services for the technical and
above all the functional integration of distributed, technically encapsulated EMIS services to a complete
system. These are realized by a Green Service Mall. A mediation instance is coordinating this (automated)
find the right services and their links to the respective workflow support. Such an approach is characterized by high flexibility and by being highly integrated. According to the software-as-a-service approach
the developed prototype is available to interested companies. These can thus complete software modules,
as well as software-based services and combine and flexibly integrate them in their software landscape.
Copyright 2012 Shaker Verlag Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1248-4
5.
Outlook and further steps
The implementation of the integration platform for the various EMIS services has already started; the
creation of specialized concepts is done in close cooperation with our partners from the business world, to
underpin the future practical relevance of the created concepts. Current challenges which tackle the next
step, make the necessary specifications for a uniform data exchange format based on XML, the definition
of the EMIS services that implement the different workflow activities as well as for a compliant integration of services.
6.
Literature
Borgstedt, S., Christ, T., & Reusswig, F. (2010). Umweltbewusstsein in Deutschland 2010: Ergebnisse
einer repräsentativen Bevölkerungsumfrage. Niestetal.
Claus Rautenstrauch (Hrsg.) (1999). Springer‐Lehrbuch. Betriebliche Umweltinformationssysteme. Berlin
Heidelberg: Springer.
Marx Gómez, J. M., Strahringer, S., & Teuteberg, F. (2010). Green Computing Sustainability: HMD ;
Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik Heft 274 (1. Aufl.). s.l.: dpunkt.verlag.
Schaltegger, S., Herzig, C., Kleiber, O., Klinke, T., & Müller, J. (2007). Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement in
Unternehmen: Von der Idee zur Praxis: Managementansätze zur Umsetzung von Corporate Social
Responsibility und Corporate Sustainability. Berlin.
Volk, R. (Hrsg.) (2001). Handbuch Umweltcontrolling (2., völlig überarb. und erw. Aufl.). München:
Vahlen.
Wohlgemuth, V. (Hrsg.) (2008). Berichte aus der Umweltinformatik. Konzepte, Anwendungen, Realisierungen und Entwicklungstendenzen betrieblicher Umweltinformationssysteme (BUIS): [WS 1.
Berliner BUIS-Tage]. Aachen: Shaker.
Copyright 2012 Shaker Verlag Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1248-4