Environmetrics as a tool for sustainability assessment

Abstract

Chemical engineers offer specific systems to measure the company's level of sustainability. Environmentalists develop monitoring nets, hoping to find appropriate metrics for clean production, for reduction of pollution levels both outdoor and indoor. Socio-economists direct their efforts to economic evaluation of environmental assets and their life-supporting quality by combining ecological functions and revitalisation costs of various biotopes. Despite the complex character of the separate sustainability metrics, the results are still far from being satisfactory as they carry the sign of the 'univariateness'. Multivariate approaches seem a better solution. The monitored data from various environments, although in high amounts, turned out to be only regional databases without global impact or importance. The development of environmetrics, the branch of the science that deals with classification, modelling and interpretation of large environmental datasets has led to the gaining of absolutely new and reliable information on pollution on a global scale. The goal of the present communication is to present the idea of application of multiavariate statistics in environmental sciences.