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ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS 29 3 Environmental Information Systems The goal of information systems is to establish facts and distribute information products needed by users. Some information systems are designed to fulfill a single purpose, either scientific, commercial or operational (see Box 3.1). Such systems are optimized for satisfying that specific purpose. Others capitalize on shared interests and serve a variety of user groups. The downside is that such multi-purpose systems are sometimes less flexible, always require extensive consultation and more complex decision making, and may compromise on quality for some particular purposes. Where the environment is concerned, practical reasons frequently dictate the creation of shared information systems that serve the five stakeholder groups âscientists, government agencies, private-sector enterprises, policy makers, and the general public. Scientists are interested in obtaining as many measurements as possible and want to share the data collected for operations and decision making purposes; government agencies are seeking to stretch limited resources by building partnerships with other organizations; and private- sector organizations can more readily recover costs by exploiting technologies developed by the government or by building onto systems that have already been paid for. In addition, many environmental data can only be obtained locally but must be interpreted in a national or global context. Thus, many different nations also have an interest in shared systems. This chapter uses the analogy of a tree and, by extension, clusters of related trees to describe the attributes of each part of the information system and the roles of the different stakeholders.
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS 30 BOX 3.1 ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS An environmental information system is the framework for making systematic measurements, and collecting, combining, and processing the resulting data into information products. Information systems are necessary when (1) there are diverse or large volumes of data to manage; (2) the users are different from the data collectors; and/or (3) there are multiple sources of information that have to be integrated. Environmental information systems can be created to fulfill a single purpose or to serve multiple purposes. An example of a single-purpose environmental information system is the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Support System, which serves scientists monitoring and studying tropical rainfall and global atmospheric circulation.a The TRMM Support System is used to collect data from the U.S.-Japan satellite, validate them, produce a range of data products, and distribute them to research scientists. An example of a shared environmental information system is the World Weather Watch. The World Weather Watch offers up-to-the-minute worldwide weather information through member-operated observation systems and telecommunication links with nine satellites, about 10,000 land and 7,000 ship observation stations and 300 moored and drifting buoys carrying automatic weather stations.b The system was designed for operational meteorology, but transoceanic ships and airplanes, research scientists, the media, commercial weather services, and the general public also use this constant supply of timely data. The data management system integrates the observational networks and communications links into a coherent system, and provides a framework for managing data and products, and monitoring data and product availability and quality. The principal products are computer model results, translatable into weather maps, and a collection of validated data that provide an irreplaceable historical record of climate change that will be used by future generations of scientists in ways that cannot be foreseen. Both the World Weather Watch and the TRMM Support System are examples of public-purpose environmental information systems, because they were created in the public interest. Such information systems provide a regular service for the public benefit (e.g., research, monitoring environmental changes on a long-term basis, monitoring the provisions of international treaties) as distinguished from conferring an economic advantage on a particular data producer. Other examples of environmental information systems created purely or partly for public purposes include the Global Ocean Observing System, World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Hydrology and Water Resources Programme, U.S.
