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ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS 35 BOX 3.3 CURRENT AND POTENTIAL USES OF ENVIRONMENTAL DATA Current uses of environmental information include the following: ⢠Private-sector activities, including agriculture, fishing, and forest industries; energy and natural resources industries; infrastructure, transport, and communications industries; and services industries, such as insurance, real estate, financial, news and media, software, travel, tourism, and leisure. ⢠Public-sector activities, including public and national administration, public and operational services, education, training, and research. Potential new uses include cartography, urban planning, risk management, environment management, land registry, disaster planning, civil engineering infrastructure, and operational services. It is not possible to identify all distinct groups of environmental users and their needs, yet both must be taken into account in designing or updating the information system. Information on user needs can be obtained from competitive markets, where such markets exist, or from proxies such as the operators of the branches, who interact directly with the users, or community spokesgroups (see Chapter 2). SOURCE: ESYS Limited, 1997, European EO Industry and Market: 1998 SnapshotâFinal Report, Prepared for the European Commission, Guildford, United Kingdom, 82 pp. The Cycle for Updating Environmental Information Systems Information systems build on existing capabilities, and participants at all levels determine which incremental changes should be made. Refining the system is a cyclic process of (1) users setting priorities for the output requirements; (2) designing a system to satisfy as many of those requirements as possible; (3) implementing the system; (4) gaining practical experience from operating the system and generating products; and (5) going back to the users and refining their statements of requirements. The cyclic nature of the system is driven by technological
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS 36 advances, which enable tasks to be performed better or less expensively than before, and by new opportunities or understanding, which change user priorities over time and thus change the demands that they put on the core products. Such refinement depends upon and should contribute to a healthy infrastructure of scientific research and development that is providing new understanding for data interpretation, more capable instruments, and new useful products. On the other hand, keeping up with changes in the core products will pose a challenge to all users, including private-sector organizations, which will have to update their business plans regularly. The trunk, roots, and branches on an environmental information tree have to work together in an efficient and cost-effective manner to serve the needs of end users. For example, the need to synthesize data and information into knowledge places three requirements on the system: (1) the tree must have multiple roots (i.e., a wide range of data taken at different temporal and spatial scales); (2) the data collection must optimize the development of core products; and (3) the products must be useful and accessible to the users. The responsibility for assuring such coherence rests ultimately with the government agencies who are funding the bulk of the operation. A significant managerial challenge is to entrain at each stage individuals with the appropriate range of experience and vision to facilitate communication between the groups responsible for ongoing implementation, system funding, needs assessment, and scientific and technical redesign. A key decision in each cycle is the specification of core products. Conclusion. Because core products serve the needs of multiple stakeholders, a clear process by which such needs are articulated and represented in decision making is critical to the success of the information system.
