Environmental Management Information Research Articles

Information Communication and Computation Technologies (ICCT) for Agricultural and Environmental Information Systems for Society 5.0

Purpose: This paper aims to discover the dynamic landscape of Information Communication and Computation Technologies (ICCT) within agriculture and environmental information management, elucidating their evolutionary trajectory and the resonance of Society 5.0 principles in fostering innovative solutions. By scrutinizing the core technologies constituting ICCT in these sectors, it endeavours to shed light on the potential for integration within the framework of Society 5.0, contemplating both the possibilities and challenges inherent in this convergence. Methodology: This exploratory chapter delves into the evolving landscape of Society 5.0 and its pivotal emphasis on the integration of Information Communication and Computation Technologies (ICCT) to address the complex challenges in agriculture and environmental information management. Analysis/Results: The paper provides a background on the evolution of Society 5.0 and establishes the rationale for exploring the role of ICCT in advancing Agricultural and Environmental Information Systems within this transformative societal framework. The core technologies in ICCT are explored through IoT applications in precision agriculture, the transformative impact of blockchain in agricultural supply chains, and the utilization of remote sensing and Earth observation systems along with data analytics for environmental insights. The paper further investigates the integration of ICCT in Society 5.0 agricultural and environmental systems, unveiling how these technologies support smart farming practices, citizen engagement in agricultural decision-making, and sustainable resource management. Case studies highlight successful ICCT implementations in agriculture and environmental management, underscoring best practices and lessons learned. Emerging trends in ICCT for agriculture and environmental science are explored, providing insights into future developments. Originality/Value: Through the lens of case studies showcasing successful ICCT implementations, it seeks to distill key insights, while also conducting a forward-looking assessment of emerging trends and applications, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of the evolving role of ICCT in shaping sustainable agricultural and environmental information paradigms within the societal context of the future. Type of Paper: Exploratory analysis.

Compliance with Health Care Quality Standards in Government Accredited Hospitals in the Province of Albay

Global health systems operate within ever-evolving local and global environments, influenced by various factors, including economic shifts, demographic dynamics, and technological advancements, among other variables. A study was conducted to determine the Health Care Quality Standards among the government-accredited hospitals in the province of Albay. Specifically, it identified the status of Health Care Quality Standards in the Province of Albay along with Policies and Procedures, Services, Human Resources, Budget, and Logistical Resources. It determines the Health Care Quality Standards among the government-accredited hospitals in the province of Albay regarding Patient Care Management, Human Resource Management, Information Management, and Safe Practice and Environment. The quantitative method was used to gather responses from respondents. The respondents of the study are personnel from the top and middle management and selected patients in the three hospitals. Hence, the study revealed that the Health Care Quality Standards among the government-accredited hospitals in the province of Albay are complied with based on the requirements set forth by the hospitals among the four components. Thus, it ensures that health services are responsive to the needs of targeted individuals and communities and encourages the role of communities as co-producers of health. The study recommends a sustainable healthcare management framework to strengthen and sustain comprehensive healthcare services, thus improving the community's quality of life.

Water-related fatalities: An examination of body displacement and recovery patterns in British Columbia, Canada.

Early recovery of human bodies from the water requires an understanding of how a body acts in the water. However, there is currently a lack of baseline data surrounding body movement in British Columbian (B.C.) waters. This study aims to assist Canadian response agencies with understanding and predicting body movement in outdoor waterbodies in B.C. One hundred and eighty-six water-related fatalities in B.C. waters, including lakes, rivers, and the coastal Pacific Ocean, were examined to determine the recovery times and displacement patterns of submerged decedents. Cases between 2010 and 2021 were extracted from the Police Records Information Management Environment (PRIME-BC) for analysis. Most deaths were unintentional, followed by suicide and homicide, and most often occurred in rivers, followed by lakes and the ocean. Regardless of waterbody, the first day was the most successful recovery period, with decedents most often recovered close to the incident location. Nearly 16% of individuals in this study were not recovered. Recovery success was greatest in lakes, followed by rivers and the ocean. Body displacement was the least in lakes, while rivers resulted in the furthest and most variable displacement. Low recovery success in the ocean is likely due to decedents being quickly displaced out of the search area, never to be found. The results of this study suggest that knowledge of body movement in outdoor aquatic environments remains incomplete. Further empirical research based on known data is necessary to continue improving prediction of body movement and increase early recovery success.

Forty-Seven Years of Environmental Management Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Environmental sustainability is considered as responsible engagement with the environment in order to prevent the depletion or degradation of natural resources and ensure long-term environmental quality. Environmental management accounting (EMA) is a tool that aids in enhancing environmental performance and environmental information management. EMA is a growing topic, but there hasn't been a complete analysis to pull everything together and make sense of it all. By adopting bibliometric review, through performance analysis, and science mapping, our research fills in this research gap. Biblioshiny in R and VOS viewer is used for conducting data analysis. Through an extensive study of 1,075 documents, this study discloses the publication and citation trend, top influential authors, journals, publications, and top productive institutions and countries. The study also identifies topic trends through temporal analysis. Different thematic clusters are identified through bibliographic coupling and Co-occurrence of the author’s keywords (i.e. Social and environmental accounting, Environmental management accounting, Environmental performance, Carbon accounting, Sustainability, and sustainable development, Eco-system services, Environmental disclosure, and corporate social responsibility). Centrality measures are presented to show the impact of the author and keywords. The study concludes with suggestions for future study, and ways forward focusing on Circular economy, green accounting, material flow cost accounting, carbon accounting, sustainability, etc. The study is wholly dependent on the Scopus database, further studies can explore other databases like Web of science, google scholar, and others.

Integrating Neuroscience Principles into the Development of a Tailored Daily Report: A Universal Design Approach

Abstract Information management environments are typically dynamic, data-rich, and inherently multimodal but often do not support users sufficiently. Information management environments include the tools, supports, and persons which collect, organize, manage, and maintain information. The dynamism of the environment arises because of users’ need to use top-down attentional and memory approaches while attempting to use the available resources. In addition to the specific attentional and cognitive demands, many information management environments treat users as a monolithic group. The complexity of the interaction between the environment, the knowledge worker, and their individual needs creates serious difficulties in developing tailored tools and reports. Despite the intent of these “tailored” reports to simplify the interaction between the knowledge worker and the deluge of data for decision-making purposes, successfully creating a tailored report is still an active area of research. However, in the last decade, technologies that were considered theoretical have now been realized via the fourth industrial revolution. The success of the fourth industrial revolution has resulted in tools such as machine learning to drive the automated tailoring of information for individual knowledge workers. Despite early successes, the drive toward complete individualization and differentiation solely through computational means seems to reduce the effectiveness of the individual and has shown only limited success. To address these shortcomings, the authors of this essay suggest using a more comprehensive framework (Universal Design) to develop a tailored report. Universal Design (UD) is a design framework based upon the Universal Design for Learning framework. UD is a framework that promotes inclusive and equitable access to information for all knowledge workers through the application of “equalizer.” By acknowledging and addressing users’ individual needs and information processing preferences, UD can support creating a generative environment in which every individual has their needs met without individualization and differentiation occurring through specific automation. Keywords: Universal design, Adaptive environments, Information processing, Generative information environments, Knowledge workers.

Implementation of augmented reality and mixed reality applications for smart facilities management: a systematic review

PurposeThe Operations and Maintenance (O&M) cost of a facility is typically 60–85% of the total life cycle cost of a building whereas its design and construction cost accounts for only 5–10%. Therefore, enhancing and optimizing the O&M of a facility is a crucial issue. In addition, with the increasing complexities in a building's operating systems, more technologically advanced solutions are required for proactively maintaining a facility. Thereby, a tool is needed which can optimize and reduce the cost of facility maintenance. One of the solutions is Augmented or Mixed Reality (AR/MR) technologies which can reduce repair time, training time and streamline inspections. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to establish contextual knowledge of AR/MR application in facilities operation and maintenance and present an implementation framework through the analysis and classification of articles published between 2015 and 2022.Design/methodology/approachTo effectively understand all AR/MR applications in facilities management (FM), a systematic literature review is performed. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) protocol was followed for searching and describing the search strategies. Keywords were identified through the concept mapping technique. The Scopus database and Google Scholar were employed to find relevant articles, books and conference papers. A thorough bibliometric analysis was conducted using VOS Viewer and subsequently, a thematic analysis was performed for the selected publications.FindingsThe use of AR/MR within facilities O&M could be categorized into five different application areas: (1) visualization; (2) maintenance; (3) indoor localization and positioning; (4) information management and (5) indoor environment. After a thematic analysis of the literature, it was found that maintenance and indoor localization were the most frequently used research application domains. The chronological evolution of AR/MR in FM is also presented along with the origin of publications, which showed that the technology is out of its infancy stage and is ready for implementation. However, literature showed many challenges hindering this goal, that is (1) reluctance of the organizational leadership to bear the cost of hardware and trainings for the employees, (2) Lack of BIM use in FM and (3) system lagging, crashing and unable to register the real environment. A preliminary framework is presented to overcome these challenges.Originality/valueThis study accommodates a variety of application domains within facilities O&M. The publications were systematically selected from the existing literature and then reviewed to exhibit various AR/MR applications to support FM. There have been no literature reviews that focus on AR and/or MR in the FM and this paper fills the gap by not only presenting its applications but also developing an implementation framework.

Logical Environment and Supervisory Regulatory Frameworks for Effective Information Management of Public Universities in Nigeria

The study determined the logical environment and supervisory regulatory frameworks for effective information management of public universities in Nigeria. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population was 1580 Management staff. 432 respondents were proportionally sampled from each of the Public universities studied. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire developed by the researcher. The questionnaire was face-validated by five experts. The reliability of the instrument was tested using Cronbach Alpha method and yielded an overall coefficient of 0.93. Mean and Analysis of Variance were used to analyze data collected. The findings showed that the management staff agreed to the 42 items measuring the logical environment and Supervisory regulatory actions for effective information management. The findings further showed that no significant difference existed among the opinions of the respondents on the level at which they adopted the logical environment security and supervisory regulatory actions for effective information management of their institutions. It was recommended among others, that the management of Public universities in Nigeria should enact and implement effective policies and laws that support the adoption of information regulatory actions.

Revisiting the role of firm-level carbon disclosure in sustainable development goals: Research agenda and policy implications

The urgency to overcome climate change under COP 26 and 27 has allowed closer attention towards environmental sustainability. As a result, businesses are under pressure from stakeholders to provide more information about greenhouse gas emissions and ecological footprints. The current study performs a systematic review of firm-level carbon disclosure under carbon disclosure project (CDP) publications to articulate key research themes based on bibliographic coupling, citation mapping and content analysis. VOSViewer was used to analyze carbon disclosure literature to provide a comprehensive overview of research themes, most-contributing authors, research journals, and keywords. Our findings reveal that climate change strategies, carbon footprint and market response to climate change (cluster 1), carbon information, stock market & financial performance and impact of environmental penalties over the cost of capital (cluster 2), GHG disclosure, stakeholder relevance and BOD effectiveness in environmental strategies (cluster 3) and determinants for dissemination of environmental information, carbon mitigation, and carbon management systems (cluster 4) are the most significant research themes within the existing research. Based on our research analysis, we provide several key policy recommendations to use carbon disclosure practices as a benchmark in evaluating firms’ commitment to environmental sustainability.

Quality management integration in the functionality of product lifecycle management in energy-effective production

In the current realities, there are practices where companies use various tools and systems to plan and manage the quality of products and processes. Many of these tools and systems are disconnected from data/product information management systems to varying degrees, depending on the level of workflow automation. The disadvantage of disparate quality management tools is that repetitive issues that occur across multiple systems can make it difficult to investigate root causes by isolating related data items without being able to understand the relationships between them. The conventional method also provides energy loss in production due to extra power consumption. Redundant work to identify and fix quality issues can be done across multiple tools without an automated way to communicate what you've learned to other teams. This leads to inconsistent and incomplete solutions to problems that hinder rather than improve product and process quality. Thanks to the recent development of new technologies, many IT tools have become available on the market, among them product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, which are very popular among companies that allow them to create and support complex industrial products, including aeronautical equipment. The article provides an end-to-end solution on a platform like this, which aims to link quality to product design, sustainable development in the field of energy-effective production. This approach provides multidisciplinary teams and the broader supply chain with powerful closed-loop capabilities to identify and manage risks, improve quality, meet customer requirements, and ensure compliance with environmental health, safety, and information management requirements.

OpΕnergy: An Intelligent System for Monitoring EU Energy Strategy Using EU Open Data

In this paper, the basic structure of an ICT platform of energy indicators, Openergy, is analytically presented, leveraging energy open data to help address the energy crisis more democratically. More specifically, its applicability as a dynamic tool for the management of climate, environmental, and socioeconomic information is described, and its efficiency in helping uncover insights for optimal data-driven decisions is depicted. Openergy uses data from the official portal for European data and the Eurostat site. Its database consists of data related to six energy categories, EU 2020 energy targets, energy balance, electricity production, transport fuels, heat production, and gas emissions, and each one includes its own indicators for EU countries. The platform includes visualizations of these data as well as time series modeling and forecasting, and the results are depicted at Openergy platform. The time series modeling provides forecasts with confidence intervals of each indicator until 2020 in each energy category. Empirical validation, RMSE, and MAE values showed that in almost all cases and estimations, the predicted values are in very good agreement with the observed values.

Construction of Natural Environment Information Management System of Scenic Spots Based on GIS

Construction of Natural Environment Information Management System of Scenic Spots Based on GIS

Environmental information access and management in the Lithium Triangle: is it transparent information?

Lithium is a key element in the new energy paradigm. In the Lithium Triangle countries, extractive pressure has increased considerably in the last decade. Lithium from salt flat mines could become a development driver for the region, but what is the real impact of the activity? Are all the cards on the table? To explore these questions, this article analyses the transparency and availability of environmental information on lithium mining from the framework of environmental governance. It finds that the current forms of information dissemination show situations of inequality, invalidating a fair and equitable transition to electromobility.

Clinical Network for Big Data and Personalized Health: Study Protocol and Preliminary Results.

The use of secondary hospital-based clinical data and electronical health records (EHR) represent a cost-efficient alternative to investigate chronic conditions. We present the Clinical Network Big Data and Personalised Health project, which collects EHRs for patients accessing hospitals in Central-Southern Italy, through an integrated digital platform to create a digital hub for the collection, management and analysis of personal, clinical and environmental information for patients, associated with a biobank to perform multi-omic analyses. A total of 12,864 participants (61.7% women, mean age 52.6 ± 17.6 years) signed a written informed consent to allow access to their EHRs. The majority of hospital access was in obstetrics and gynaecology (36.3%), while the main reason for hospitalization was represented by diseases of the circulatory system (21.2%). Participants had a secondary education (63.5%), were mostly retired (25.45%), reported low levels of physical activity (59.6%), had low adherence to the Mediterranean diet and were smokers (30.2%). A large percentage (35.8%) were overweight and the prevalence of hypertension, diabetes and hyperlipidemia was 36.4%, 11.1% and 19.6%, respectively. Blood samples were retrieved for 8686 patients (67.5%). This project is aimed at creating a digital hub for the collection, management and analysis of personal, clinical, diagnostic and environmental information for patients, and is associated with a biobank to perform multi-omic analyses.

Editorial Letter

This special issue “Sustainable Architecture and Urban Environment” is published with selected research articles of the 2020 International Conference on Climate Change, Green Energy and Environmental Sustainability (CCGEES 2020) held in Haikou, Hainan Province, P.R. China during 18-20 December 2020. CCGEES 2020 aims to bring together scientists, engineers and scholars for sharing of their latest research findings and experiences in dealing with climate change, sustainable design and development in today’s fast changing world. The special issue covers a wide range of research topics dealt with in a multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional approaches. Research areas include but not limited to: smart mobility, social innovation, sustainable and resilient buildings, social impacts and cities resiliency, energy transition, financing sustainability, energy efficiency, clean energy deployment, and ICT, smart grid and intelligent infrastructure. Sustainable design, sustainable development and sustainable urbanization is more crucial to a developing country like China. With rapid economic growth and urbanization, how to develop an economy without compromising the environment, how to create a built environment in harmony with the human beings and improve people’s living quality, have caught the attention of the Chinese governments at different levels, and research community at large. A variety of research topics are addressed in this special issue, such as the use of recycled building materials, user-friendly urban planning and design, water quality modelling, environmental information management, green building design, etc. The research findings and discussions are expected to advance the theory and practice in sustainable development. Thanks to the contributions of the au-thors who disseminate their top-notch research works to benefit the research community and policy makers in the field. The authors responded swiftly to the editor and publisher on their requests to make improvement to the manuscripts and address the questions from the reviewers with their best efforts. Special thanks are also extended to the managing editor Claudio M. Amescua García of the Revista Internacional de Contaminación Ambiental Journal, who dedicated tremendous efforts to the editing and publishing of the special issue with Professionalism.We wish the readers enjoy the reading of the rigorously selected research articles in the special issue and benefit from the research works presented by the authors.

ИННОВАЦИОННО-ИНВЕСТИЦИОННАЯ МОДЕЛЬ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ ЭНЕРГОСБЕРЕГАЮЩИМИ ТЕХНОЛОГИЯМИ ТЭЦ

In present-day conditions, the positioning of energy saving and energy efficiency processes is one of the priorities of the National Strategy for Sustainable Socio-Economic Development of the Republic of Belarus. The article builds an innovation and investment model for managing ener- gy-saving technologies of an energy enterprise based on the analytical research results, reasonable parameters and criteria, which makes it possible to create a framework for industry 4.0 and a basis for sectoral scientific and technological integration within the EAEU. The object of the study is the management of energy-saving technologies at the Mogilev CHP-2 Branch of RUE Mogilevenergo in the system of innovative development. The authors present the organi- zational and economic foundations for the research of an innovative approach to the management of energy-saving technologies at an energy enterprise and conceptual approaches to the construction of an innovation and investment model in the control unit. The results of a retrospective and prospective anal- ysis of energy efficiency in the format of the use of fixed assets of the branch are summarized, which made it possible to identify the need and objects of the innovation and investment activity. Low-cost projects are recommended for implementation, as well as a large- scale project of energy-saving technologies at production sites of equipment with a high level of physical and moral wear and tear, requiring increased efficiency and innovativeness of implemented technologies for generating the energy and providing its flexible release. In the hierarchy of measures, priority is assigned to low-cost technologies of modernization and reconstruction of Mogilev CHP-2. An investment project is developed for the introduction of low-cost technologies for the modernization of Mogilev CHP-2 with a high level of innovation, providing increased capacity, maneuverability and the energy efficiency of the organization. The effect of mutual influence of energy saving, energy efficiency and innovative development of an energy enterprise on achieving the goals of its sustainable development is substantiated. The article treats of the development of the analytical control unit for the energy saving and efficiency improvement in the conditions of innovative development on the basis of a systematic and integrated approach to the inter- relationships and interdependencies between the effective and factor indicators of the information and analytical management environment. An investment project that provides the effect of mutual influence of ener- gy saving, energy efficiency and innovative development with the target vector of sustainable development of the energy enterprise is considered as a result of the practical use of an innovative approach to the management of energy- saving technologies.

Webmapping of Floods in the West of the Ivorian Coast

To provide answers to the problem of the management of its coastal zone, Côte d’Ivoire has initiated a pooling of data collected on the coast to feed its environmental information management system. To this end, it was a question of creating an interactive platform for decision support for the development of this coastal zone. To achieve this objective, high spatial resolution raster data from 15 to 90 m from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and land cover vector data from 2017 were collected for processing in Websig software (QGIS 3.4, PostGreSql 10.5, PostGIS), published and displayed in Geoserveur for programming HTML, CSS and JavaScript codes in Atom. The results first made it possible to visualize the main issues in the interface, in particular, the rivers, the classified forests, the degraded forests, the intact forests, the housing and the industrial plantations and then to assess the risks of floods in Sassandra and San-Pédro. For overflow hazards 100 m beyond the shore, it is the houses, part of the forests and some bare soil that are submerged. As for the risks of overflowing 200 to 500 m beyond the shore, it is a large part of the housing, soils and intact forests that will be flooded. This tool must be made available to the final beneficiaries (users) by putting it online and listing it in the main search engines.

Formation of electronic information management environment as a factor in the development of animal husbandry in the Volgograd region

The article substantiates the need for targeted state support of digitalization of agricultural enterprises of the Volgograd region for the development of digital infrastructure. A model of electronic information management environment of an agricultural enterprise of dairy cattle breeding as a set of applied software systems and complexes designed to process legal, regulatory and reference, commercial, accounting and analytical, planning information in accordance with the principles of forming a single interactive database of managerial decision-making in terms of information security was developed. A link between the applied software systems, smart livestock complexes and the process of managerial decision-making in the electronic information environment of agricultural enterprise management is the information of management accounting and analysis. Special importance in the electronic information environment of agricultural enterprise management is given to corporate communications, providing discussion of proposed solutions, communication control of decision implementation, organization of communication with counterparties (customers, suppliers), potential partners, creditors, investors and government agencies.

Darkness, Datafication, and Provenance as an Illuminating Methodology

Darkness, Datafication, and Provenance as an Illuminating Methodology

Method of centralized reproduction of information transmission processes in the digital platform control loop

The control loop model and a new method for reproducing information transfer processes in the digital platform ecosystem are developed and proposed. The presented innovative solutions are based on a semantic model created for the functional architecture of a component in the ecosystem of a digital platform that provides information interaction of organizational systems. The novelty of the method is to provide the possibility of coordinated centralized management in a single information management environment of the digital platform ecosystem.

Application of a technology based on JavaEE in National Rural Environmental Health Monitoring Information Management System

To establish a national rural environmental health monitoring information management system supporting the application and management of four levels of data at the county, municipal, provincial and national levels, to realize the inter-departmental and cross-platform interconnection service of the national environmental health monitoring information management system. JavaEE and BS architecture platform, Web Service, XML and other data application and exchange service technologies were used to set data entry and audit functions, such as logic verification, extreme value verification and inter-table relationship verification for key variables, and also used to make the computer interface automatically configured. The functions of data entry, audit, exchange, historical data query and download, system management and maintenance, monitoring system feedback, data reporting progress of the national rural environmental health monitoring information management system across different departments and platforms can be realized by the JavaEE technology. The national rural environmental health monitoring information management system was simple in operation and friendly in interface, and had a good application prospect in the field of public health monitoring data management.