Environmental Informatics is a fast growing field which deals with all methods from computer science, environmental planning, ecology and related subjects. As well as being an interdisciplinary area, Environmental Informatics provides an interface between all involved professional groups. Monitoring the state of the environment, analysing existing data, presenting the data to scientists and the public, as well as providing decision support are only some of the topics involved. Environmental Informatics is therefore a good foundation for the computer-assisted protection of the environment.

Environmental Informatics (or Enviromatics) is a maturing subject with interdisciplinary roots in computer science, environmental planning, ecology, economics and other related areas. Its practitioners must be prepared to work with many diverse professional groups. It forms the foundation for computer-assisted environmental protection. This book contains an edited version of papers presented at the 3rd International Symposium on Environmental Software Systems (ISESS '99), which was held at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, from August 30 to September 2, 1999, and was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). The text is divided into six sections: Enviromatics - Introduction; Environmental Issues; Environmental Information Systems - Tools and Techniques; Environmental Information Systems - Implementations; Environmental Decision Support Systems; Specialised Topics. This state-of-the-art volume will be essential reading for computer scientists and engineers, ecologists, and environmental planners and managers.

Due to increasing practical needs, software support of environmental protection and research tasks is growing in importance and scope. Software systems help to monitor basic data, to maintain and process relevant environmental information, to analyze gathered information and to carry out decision processes, which often have to take into account complex alternatives with various side effects. Therefore software is an important tool for the environmental domain. When the first software systems in the environmental domain grew - 10 to 15 years ag- users and developers were not really aware of the complexity these systems are carrying with themselves: complexity with respect to entities, tasks and procedures. I guess nobody may have figured out at that time that the environmental domain would ask for solutions which information science would not be able to provide and - in several cases - can not provide until today. Therefore environmental informatics - as we call it today - is also an important domain of computer science itself, because practical solutions need to deal with very complex, interdisciplinary, distributed, integrated, sometimes badly defined, user-centered decision processes. I doubt somebody will state that we are already capable of building such integrated systems for end users for reasonable cost on a broad range. The development of the first scientific community for environmental informatics started around 1985 in Germany, becoming a technical committee and working group of the German Computer Society in 1987.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th IFIP WG 5.11 International Symposium on Environmental Software Systems, ISESS 2011, held in Brno, Czech Republic, in June 2011. The 68 revised full papers presented together with four invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: eEnvironment and cross-border services in digital agenda for Europe; environmental information systems and services - infrastructures and platforms; semantics and environment; information tools for global environmental assessment; climate services and environmental tools for urban planning and climate change - applications and services.

Environmental Informatics is a fast growing field which deals with all methods from computer science, environmental planning, ecology and related subjects. As well as being an interdisciplinary area, Environmental Informatics provides an interface between all involved professional groups. Monitoring the state of the environment, analysing existing data, presenting the data to scientists and the public, as well as providing decision support are only some of the topics involved. Environmental Informatics is therefore a good foundation for the computer-assisted protection of the environment.

Environmental Informatics (or Enviromatics) is a maturing subject with interdisciplinary roots in computer science, environmental planning, ecology, economics and other related areas. Its practitioners must be prepared to work with many diverse professional groups. It forms the foundation for computer-assisted environmental protection. This book contains an edited version of papers presented at the 3rd International Symposium on Environmental Software Systems (ISESS '99), which was held at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, from August 30 to September 2, 1999, and was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). The text is divided into six sections: * Enviromatics - Introduction; * Environmental Issues; * Environmental Information Systems - Tools and Techniques; * Environmental Information Systems - Implementations; * Environmental Decision Support Systems; * Specialised Topics. This state-of-the-art volume will be essential reading for computer scientists and engineers, ecologists, and environmental planners and managers.

Due to increasing practical needs, software support of environmental protection and research tasks is growing in importance and scope. Software systems help to monitor basic data, to maintain and process relevant environmental information, to analyze gathered information and to carry out decision processes, which often have to take into account complex alternatives with various side effects. Therefore software is an important tool for the environmental domain. When the first software systems in the environmental domain grew - 10 to 15 years ag- users and developers were not really aware of the complexity these systems are carrying with themselves: complexity with respect to entities, tasks and procedures. I guess nobody may have figured out at that time that the environmental domain would ask for solutions which information science would not be able to provide and - in several cases - can not provide until today. Therefore environmental informatics - as we call it today - is also an important domain of computer science itself, because practical solutions need to deal with very complex, interdisciplinary, distributed, integrated, sometimes badly defined, user-centered decision processes. I doubt somebody will state that we are already capable of building such integrated systems for end users for reasonable cost on a broad range. The development of the first scientific community for environmental informatics started around 1985 in Germany, becoming a technical committee and working group of the German Computer Society in 1987.

Angesichts des zunehmenden Informationsbedarfs im Umweltbereich wird die benutzergerechte Darstellung von Umweltinformation im weitesten Sinne immer wichtiger. Hiervon betroffen sind alle Informatiksysteme, die Umweltinformation verarbeiten. Der 2. Workshop "Visualisierung von Umweltdaten" fand vom 26.-28. November 1991 im Internationalen Begegnungs- und Forschungszentrum fur Informatik (IBFI) Schloss Dagstuhl statt. Der Workshop wurde veranstaltet von der Fachgruppe 4.6 "Informatik im Umweltschutz" der Gesellschaft fur Informatik (Arbeitskreis Visualisierung von Umweltdaten), dem Institut fur Umweltinformatik an der Hochschule fur Technik und Wirtschaft des Saarlandes und der Universitat Rostock. Die in Fachvortragen, Arbeitsgruppen und Tutorien abgedeckten Themen behandelten alle wichtigen Aspekte der Prasentation von Umweltinformation: Visualisierungstechniken, Benutzeroberflachen, geographische Informationssysteme, Anwendungen, Benutzeranforderungen, Werkzeuge und Methoden. Ziel des dreitagigen Workshops war, Entwickler, Anwender und Forscher zusammenzubringen, um die Probleme und Moglichkeiten der Visualisierung zu beleuchten. Der Band enthalt die Fachvortrage, Diskussionspapiere und eine Zusammenfassung der Ergebnisse.

Die sachgerechte Prasentation von umweltbezogenen Daten gewinnt aufgrund der steigenden Komplexitat der Umweltprobleme eine immer grossere Bedeutung. Aufgrund der Unterschiede in den Benutzerkreisen werden die Anforderungen an Visualisierungstechniken breiter. Das Buch gibt einen Uberblick uber den derzeitigen Stand in Forschung und Praxis. Dabei werden Querbezuge zu Simulation und Modellbildung, Umweltinformationssystemen und Schnittstellenproblematik hergestellt.