Keywords
environmental management information system, online communication, sustainability reporting
Start Date
1-7-2008 12:00 AM
Abstract
Environmental Management Information Systems (EMIS) are socio-technological sys-tems used as business applications to gather, process, and provide environmental information, in-side companies and in exchange with other actors in industry. They help to identify environmental impacts and support measures avoiding these impacts or reducing them. EMIS provide the neces-sary information support for decision making in companies. Hence, EMIS can be viewed as certain Information Systems (IS) usually implemented in companies as a part of their Environmental Man-agement Systems (EMS). In order to give a tangible example with practical implications, the de-velopments that EMIS have passed the last years are described along the field of “online communi-cation and sustainability reporting” and illustrated by a case study. This area represents an emerg-ing digital and fully ICT (information and communication technologies) supported approach within EMIS, using current internet technologies and services. It makes clear the array of capabilities of latest EMIS to be exploited for the improvement of advanced environmental and sustainability management, finally to the benefit for companies and their various stakeholders. The case study describes the concept and implementation of a software tool with shopping cart functionality pro-viding sustainability reports à la carte so that stakeholders (i.e. users, readers) can create their own report on the fly, exactly meeting their detailed information needs and preferred media out from a single publishing database. This software tool which represents a module of a comprehensive EMIS is implemented as a web-based ICT application. Its performance goes beyond the leading-edge approach of O2 who provides a personalized reporting feature on its website that could be re-garded as best practice and pioneering effort in sustainability online reporting, so far.
Environmental Management Information Systems – Illustrations from Online Communication and Sustainability Reporting
Environmental Management Information Systems (EMIS) are socio-technological sys-tems used as business applications to gather, process, and provide environmental information, in-side companies and in exchange with other actors in industry. They help to identify environmental impacts and support measures avoiding these impacts or reducing them. EMIS provide the neces-sary information support for decision making in companies. Hence, EMIS can be viewed as certain Information Systems (IS) usually implemented in companies as a part of their Environmental Man-agement Systems (EMS). In order to give a tangible example with practical implications, the de-velopments that EMIS have passed the last years are described along the field of “online communi-cation and sustainability reporting” and illustrated by a case study. This area represents an emerg-ing digital and fully ICT (information and communication technologies) supported approach within EMIS, using current internet technologies and services. It makes clear the array of capabilities of latest EMIS to be exploited for the improvement of advanced environmental and sustainability management, finally to the benefit for companies and their various stakeholders. The case study describes the concept and implementation of a software tool with shopping cart functionality pro-viding sustainability reports à la carte so that stakeholders (i.e. users, readers) can create their own report on the fly, exactly meeting their detailed information needs and preferred media out from a single publishing database. This software tool which represents a module of a comprehensive EMIS is implemented as a web-based ICT application. Its performance goes beyond the leading-edge approach of O2 who provides a personalized reporting feature on its website that could be re-garded as best practice and pioneering effort in sustainability online reporting, so far.
