Requirements Prioritization and Design Considerations for the Next Generation of Corporate Environmental Management Information Systems

Abstract

A multitude of heterogeneous data must be converted to environmental-conscious information and kept ready by Corporate Environmental Management Information Systems (CEMIS) to support environmental protection, sustainability, and energy efficiency within companies. Since these systems are currently not applying strategic information and decision support, contemporary systems do not cope with requirements from the sustainability discussion. Early identification of cause-and-effect-relationships is vitally important to be able to anticipate environmental impacts of decisions and, thus, to intervene in time. Otherwise the potential for acting precautious would remain unemployed. A resource-friendly design of business processes and their energy- and material-efficient control additionally demands for sustainability-oriented organizational structures as well as incentives for all stakeholders involved. The authors strive for developing a new generation of CEMIS that copes with strategic sustainability aspects. They present the results from a survey that prioritizes the requirements the authors have gained from former inquiries, workshops and expert interviews. As a direct result of the survey, first implications for architectural concepts are presented.