Information Systems for Sustainable Development

Information Systems for Sustainable Development provides a survey on approaches to information systems supporting sustainable development in the private or public sector. It also documents and encourages the first steps of environmental information processing towards this more comprehensive goal.

Dr. Lorenz M. Hilty is head of the Technology and Society Unit at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA) and a professor for information systems at the University of Applied Sciences Solothurn Northwestern Switzerland (FHSO). He is currently responsible for the research and development program "Sustainability in the Information Society" of the Council of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH), chair of the Technical Committee for Environmental Informatics of the German Informatics Society, and Swiss delegate to the Technical Committee "Computers and Society" of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP-TC9). He earned his master's and PhD in Computer Science at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and has been working on information and simulation systems in environmental research and sustainable development for two decades. He has published several books and more than 70 articles in this field.

Dr. Eberhard K. Seifert is a bio-economist and since 1993 he has been a senior fellow in the Wuppertal Institute for climate, environment and energy. Project leader in the Dpt. Environment Material flows and structural change and assoc. member of the working group on New Models of Wealth. Research areas cover both national and corporate green accounting as well as performance measurement, sustainability indicators and reporting. Winner of the Oc van der Grinten award on Environmental Information Systems in 1995/96. Advisor and member of scientific (conference) committees and boards of journals, including Journal of Bioeconomics (Kluwer Acad. Publishers). He is member of national and international networks and working groups, steering committees and institutions, and german VDI committee for drafting guidelines on environmental costs.

Dr. René H. Treibert is professor for business informatics at the Hochschule Niederrhein in North Rhine Wetsfalia in Germany. He is especially working on information systems. He is also a lecturer in the specialist area safety engineering of the Bergische University of Wuppertal. After his diploma in mathematics he worked first three years at Battelle-Institut in Frankfurt/Main, then he was about six years active in the department of environmental technology of a large German software house, before he led for about eight years the department of application development of a large enterprise in the industry utilities.