Environmental Informatics and Industrial Ecology – Scientific Profiles of Two Emerging Fields Striving for Sustainability

Abstract

This paper provides an approach that could be used to compare the fields of research of Environmental Informatics and Industrial Ecology. Based on supposed overlapping areas, this approach further facilitates the linkage between their associated communities. From a theoretical perspective, the approach makes clear whether the fields of research may have common objects, similar tools, and shared principles, values, and value judgements. No less important, the approach is also helpful from a practical point of view as it helps to identify issues for fruitful institutional cooperation and joint projects. It is argued here that a proper method for a comparison between Environmental Informatics and Industrial Ecology would be an epistemological point of view. Such an “out of the box” perspective finally helps to describe the emerging bodies of theory and clarifies contours of their certain scientific profiles. The proposed approach is illustrated in the form of a pyramid, structured in layers like an architecture, and built with the help of tools of philosophy. It has its methodological basis in a generic framework used in epistemology. This generic framework is further conceptualised through document analyses identifying certain issues that are prototypical for the current communities and literature both, for Environmental Informatics and Industrial Ecology.