Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Thereby, they improve the recognition, description, and evaluation of the charac-
teristics of the ecosystems in focus. The progress made in the technical develop-
ment of GIS, model environments and frameworks, and the technical and
conceptual problems that are being overcome in IEM imply a positive future
development for these methods (Pullar 2004; Rebolj et al. 1999). GIS may be
applied as a form of decision support systems capable to manage diverse scenarios
based on their location, showing options for actions and the potential consequences,
and highlighting developments.
Using typical GIS-Software as a main part of integrated models has its pros and
cons: On the one hand, GIS provide flexible and approachable techniques to join
scientific (simulation) models with management applications, which allows to easily
add new data, models or knowledge. Expertise gained in a certain model is portable to
another site, time, or political and legal framework. Common GIS are not yet
primarily dealing with dynamics like changing size of an entity or changing entities
over time. Nevertheless, analysing dynamics by describing allocation, dispersal and
distribution as well as patterns, boundaries and shifts is a main aim of the application
of GIS. On the other hand, the intense use of GIS for model integration leads to a
fixed technical (and conceptual) framework. To some extent GIS-applications define
and delimit integrative approaches, giving quasi-standards of data, their format and
the means of manipulation and exchange. Rather than contributing services and tools
for analysis, management and visualization of spatial data to model integration, GIS
are often understood as the technical and conceptual frameworks for environmental
modelling. However, dealing with 3D and 4D data is still a bottleneck of actual GIS.
Still, developing widely accepted technical structures and conceptual issues
across disciplines is a challenge (Hoch et al. 1998). Once the development and
application of IEM has become a routine tasks, we can have a closer look at our
modelling essentials itself. Finally, we can dare to think about approaching some of
the technical and conceptual conventions in different ways.
The issues arising from new environmental directives (e.g. Kay et al. 2006;
Borja et al. 2006) show the relevance of integrating GIS and modelling approaches
and point to what is expected from models if they are to offer adequate information
to support decisions. Many of the issues refer particularly to spatial scales and
organizational levels. They serve as important conditions of monitoring pro-
grammes and the construction of integrated models and may specify the relevance
of information, knowledge and decisions.
Additionally, integration also means joining information and knowledge, and -
with the above-mentioned background of new legal frames - sharing it. Transpar-
ency, awareness raising, and participation are crucial objectives of sustainability
and integrative science. In this context, transparency is understood as clearly
communicating the background and methodology of any model to the public and
to make accessible the underlying data and evaluation approaches. Awareness
raising could mean to enable the stakeholders to use a model to learn about the
system (Wang et al. 2005). Participation in IEM allows stakeholders to join the
decision-making process by e.g. defining their own model parameters, scenarios
and options for calculation.
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