Environmental Information Portals, Services, and Retrieval Systems

Abstract

Environmental Information (EI) accounts for the majority of public sector information in Europe, and poses a considerable potential for added value services via its customisation and re-use. One of the challenges that one faces concerning EI is to find it, categorise it, and make it available via contemporary electronic means, and especially the Internet. An additional challenge is the mapping of environmental knowledge needs to environmental systems characteristics and functions, especially when it comes to the support of business sectors that require usage of specific EI categories (like the alternative energy business sector, the life cycle analysis and assessment sector, etc). In the frame of these needs, web-based methods and technologies are presented in this paper, as developed and applied for addressing the needs of “real world”, EI-based, internet systems.