Software tool for single source multiple media and multiple requirement sustainability reporting

Abstract

In this paper, the development of a software tool is described. This software tool provides single source multiple media and multiple requirement sustainability reporting”, and thus makes the concept of internet-based sustainability reporting actually work. The software development is a joint project carried out by the Department of Business Information Systems and Operations Research (BiOR) at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, and the Institute for Technical and Business Information Systems at the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany. Single source multiple media and multiple requirement sustainability reporting is considered as the cutting edge approach in the rapidly developing field of advanced environmental and sustainability reporting using the internet. Such a comprehensive and forward-looking approach offers a variety of added value creating features compared with early environmental and sustainability reporting stages. For example, it provides a set of relevant contents (environmental, economic, social issues and mutual interrelations) that comprise the core themes for corporate sustainability, different media (print media, internet, CD-ROM etc.), it uses corresponding distributing principles (push, pull), it enables different views on the report contents, and it offers various presentation styles (media-specific, target group tailored). In technical terms, such a software tool is fully supported by an underlying ICT infrastructure that has its basis in using the internet and employing XML. As a practical application, this reporting approach is currently implemented as a software prototype. At the heart of its ICT architecture lies Cocoon, a Java-based, modular structured open source publishing framework, able to process XML documents, XML DTDs and XML Schemas, and thus suitable to perform single source multiple media and multiple requirement sustainability reporting.