Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Via ICT and the Internet, access to data and environmental information
is expanding. But, by the same token, we also can witness new lines
of inequality in access to environmental information, along with infor-
mational governance, as will become clear when we analyse the media,
the digital divide and developing countries in Chapters 9 and 10 .
Fifth, the means of monitoring are also diversifying. Originally mon-
itoring was largely related to taking physical samples and analysing
these samples in laboratories in order to reveal the qualities that were
not directly obvious for the senses. 5 Nowadays, monitoring is also car-
ried out, for instance, by webcams, by satellites and by sensory expe-
riences of lay actors. Environmental data do not only take the form
of chemical and biological quantitative numbers in tabular form, but
also are expressed as stories on weblogs, as pictures on Web sites, as
survey data in social science studies on perceptions, as complaint sys-
tems via hot lines, or as consumer preferences on nature reserves. This
is, of course, directly related to the lost monopoly of scientific data,
as discussed in the previous chapters, and the subsequent revaluation
of a variety of other kinds of information sources and data collection
means, although Burstr om and Lindqvist ( 2002 ) make clear that the
dominance of natural science environmental data and information still
continues.
3. Who monitors who?
These developments in environmental monitoring practices in the
1990s have led to shifts in monitoring arrangements and schemes. The
classical state-organised environmental monitoring of industries and
other point-source polluters is diversified. In order to bring some sys-
tematics into this diversity, we can categorise contemporary monitoring
schemes according to two characteristics or dimensions. 6
On the one
5
Although a small part of monitoring has always taken place by using sensory
experiences, for instance, when smell, natural beauty or visual pollution is at
stake. Monitoring then consists of the standardisation and aggregation of
individual sensory data into larger units, followed by statistical analysis along
time dimensions.
6
This categorisation, as well as the examples to illustrate the categories, center
on (industrial) production and consumption practices. Although this is a
significant selection covering the majority of environmentally relevant
categories, some monitoring schemes do not easily fit into this, such as those
with respect to nature restoration and preservation.
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