Development of an Open Source Software Framework as a Basis for Implementing Plugin-Based Environmental Management Information Systems (EMIS)

Abstract

The software-sided support of state of the art problems in the area of environmental management information systems (EMIS) generally leads to redevelopment of often used basic functionalities before implementation of the intended functions, which focus on the problem under investigation. This affects components regarding a certain aspect (e.g. material flow analysis or simulation runs) as well as software-related infrastructure components e.g. GUI, logging or persistence. Within the EMPORER project, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology (BMBF), an extendible and component based software platform is developed. Based on this software platform there will be some components and applications developed for the fields of material flow management and simulation as a proof of concept. Thus, the objective of this development is to offer an easy to use tool kit and framework which can seamlessly be extended by components with a close-to-the-problem functionality. To bring forward further development and distribution, the platform will be made available as an open source software framework enabling further methods and components to be complemented by third parties. This paper describes the basic architecture and the fundamental extension possibilities of the software platform which is based on Microsoft’s .NET.