Assessing Environmental Impact in Environmental Information Systems: Measurements and Monitoring

Abstract

An evaluation of an organization’s environmental performance has to be done using two general categories of indicators: (1) indicators describing management and operation performance; and (2) environmental condition indicators that reveal the organization’s impact on the environment. The latter cannot be done without systematic standardized observations and measurements conducted directly on the impacted environment. Integration of an organization’s environmental performance evaluation into the organization’s governance requires automated procedures for data collection and analysis. This chapter considers an organization’s environmental impact assessment with respect to water resources. It investigates formal approaches to temporal monitoring design producing sufficient data for the assessment and demonstrates how these approaches can be incorporated into organizational environmental information system.