Environmental Information Systems and Services (ENVIP): Infrastructures and Platforms Workshop, Bonn 2010

The Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) is one of three major initiatives along with the INSPIRE Directive and the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) undertaken by Europe to collect and share environmental information for the benefit of the global society.

Different efforts are now emerging towards the creation of infrastructures and platforms for Environmental Information Systems and Services – including Infrastructures for flexible discovery and chaining of distributed environmental services.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have an essential role to play in the context of Environmental systems as they provide the necessary support in terms of tools, systems and protocols to establish a dynamic environmental space of collaboration in a more and more sophisticated digital world. Core challenges are not only related to providing seamless environmental data access to public authorities, businesses and the public at large, but also to allowing for interoperable environmental services based on Web technologies, and stimulating new market opportunities. ICT for environmental collaboration is widely recognised as a major step for addressing complex management issues including adaptation to climate change and sustainable management of urban environment. The European Commission recently funded several projects in the area of ICT for Sustainable Growth, with a core focus on ICT for Environmental Services and Climate Change aiming at providing the foundations for an infrastructure for monitoring, predicting and managing the environment and its natural resources.

In this context, this workshop aims to tackle the research problems as well as practical experiences around frameworks, methods, concepts, models, languages and technologies that enable enhanced environmental service infrastructures and platforms. Environmental Information Systems are migrating towards being provided as Software as a Service (SaaS) and will benefit from the utilisation and specialisation of emerging Infrastructures as a Service (IaaS) and Platforms as a Service (PaaS) as this is emerging under the umbrellas of Cloud and Grid computing as well as the evolution of the Future Internet.

Of particular interest are the architectural, technical, and developmental foundations of infrastructures supporting flexible discovery and chaining of distributed environmental services, and showing how they combine synergistically to enable better collaborations on the scale required by Future Internet connected environments. The workshop aims to bring together researchers (e.g. leading modelers, architects, system vendors, open-source projects, developers, domain experts, and end-users) from academia, industry and government addressing many of these issues (including recent developments in tools and techniques, and real-world implementations of environmental infrastructures), and promote and foster a greater understanding of how open environmental service infrastructures can enable enhanced collaboration between public authorities, businesses and the general public for a better management of the environment and its natural resources.

Detailed information about the ENVIP workshop 2010 can be found here.