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The global energy sector is currently undergoing a period of fundamental change. Increasing demand is threatening to outstrip the world’s limited energy resources, resulting in high and very volatile commodity prices. At the same time, industrialized nations are becoming increasingly dependent on energy imports from just a handful of countries, and the world is waking up to the negative and irreversible consequences of climate change. These developments have a major bearing on the future energy supply situation and require new and sustainable solutions. The challenges are great: government and business must work together to meet them if end consumers are to have a reliable, affordable supply of energy into the future.

Sustainability Impact Assessment () of economic, environmental, and societal effects triggered by governmental policies has become a central requirement for policy design. The three dimensions of are inherently intertwined and subject to trade-offs. Accomplishing one objective frequently means back-pedalling on another. Therefore, research activities on increasingly aim at developing quantitative tools for trade-off-analysis along the dimensions. Since economics is the study of trade-offs, there is plenty for economists to contribute in order to make the concept of operational.

The Environmental Informatics community could recently celebrate its 20th anniversary [; ]. The application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to problems of environmental research and management has made considerable progress and contributes to sustainable development []. Moreover, ICT has the potential to virtualize processes that would otherwise consume considerable amounts of material and energy; virtual meetings, for instance, could avoid 97–98% of the CO emissions of physical meetings [].

For maintaining an efficient and reliable supply of energy throughout the next decades under a growing shortage in fossil fuel, renewable energies will be further utilized and integrated into the current electric infrastructures. Such sources are based on solar or wind power, on renewable fuel like linseed oil, or on hydrogen technology. They are used for electric power generation in typically highly distributed small or mid-size facilities. The sources are inexhaustible, and through coupling electric and heat energy (e.g. in block heat and power plants) the technical efficiency is well over 90%. Furthermore these energy sources are ecologically clean.

In the recent years Government of India as well as different provincial governments have taken up several ambitious high-way developmental activities to accelerate the economic growth of India. The increased vehicular traffic caused due to highway development is a major source of air pollution. Carrying out environ-mental impact assessment (EIA) is an essential part of major road development projects in India. Also, the assessment of impacts on air pollution is an important aspect of EIA. In the present paper, a methodology has been presented for incorporating spatial data in GIS environment for assessing air pollution impact of a highway project.

AirQUIS [] is a computer software system for air quality management, developed by NILU (Norwegian Institute for Air Research). It consists of an Oracle database, various models, and a graphical user interface.

Tehran with an area of 780 square kilometers and a population over 10 millions is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Concentration and accumulation of the industrial areas and their inappropriate location are the main reasons of pollution. While, concerning Tehran’s topographical and geological status and existence of many active faults, these areas can potentially be considered the main pollutant resources of air pollution once natural disasters occur. Therefore creating a suitable headstock for both optimized management to control air pollution and a management of crisis seems to be necessary.

An Optimum crises management needs identification of risky places before the crises happen. As forecasting and site selection are of the most important functions of Geospatial Information Systems (GIS), in this research GIS is used for modeling and estimation of risk rate. Also for assessment of collected data and classification of urban areas regard to risk rate, we used GIS technology which is able to analyze spatial and attribute data simultaneously.

The first step for this, is defining the risk parameters. In this research, three parameters are defined as main ones: nearness to faults, nearness to potential resources of air pollution and pollutant volume in these resources.

So at first, digital maps of Tehran faults was provided by GIS and saved as an input layer. But inventory of second and third parameters (nearness to potential resources of air pollution and pollutant volume in these resources) would need a time-consuming and costly field work.

For identifying the potential resources of air pollution, we had to gather statistics from industrial centers of Tehran such as chemical stores, fuel storages and position of these resources and volume of pollutants would help us in determining the remained two parameters. The position was determined by GPS and the volume of pollutants was recorded in designed forms.

While defining the combination model in GIS, the gain of emission factors of Inflammable materials was also used for more exact estimation of risk rate. Also for determination of distribution radius (determination of risk radius) and distance which is under effect of pollution, we used estimation of plum rise and meteorology. Using the Gaussian model is the basic of mathematics calculations. After determining the combination model, the model was introduced to software by using overlay functions in GIS environment. Hence, buffering analysis and overlaying of different risk layers were of the most important functions which we used in GIS section of this project.

Therefore, the risky areas around pollutant resources were identified concerning the pollutants’ volume. Then through a weighted overlay, different risk layers and buffers of Tehran’s faults, together with an estimation of probable pollution rates at the time of the incident were found.

On the basis of the conclusion of this research, not only a database for distribution status of potential resources of pollution was provided, but also it was possible for managers and plan designers to make and propose a monitoring plan and security decisions for identified resources.

In this paper we propose a solution of how to publish and visualize Inter-net-based sustainability reports. After the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) published the final version of the third generation of GRIguidelines more and more organizations start to publish sustainability reports on their Internet sites. But these reports are split by environmental topics. Readers are confronted by an in-formation flood without understanding the relationships between all topics in an organization. With the usage of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) we propose a solution of how to transform sustainability reports into Topic Maps (XTM).

For a presentation of activities and performance concerning a sustainable development, specific sustainability reports are generated for companies. Characteristics represent an essential part and furthermore a basis of sustainability reports. These indicators collect facts related to economy, ecology and human resources in a concentrated form.

In connection with a case study in cooperation with Volkswagen AG a concept for a system supported generation of sustainability reports is being developed. A result-oriented approach includes actual performance indicators of sustainability reporting in the concept.

The system concept is presented in form of an integrated concept, as in the case study existing source systems for basis information are connected to this module.

The contribution describes an information management approach that elevates the orthodox “one size fits all” disclosure practice of environmental reports to a sophisticated digital stage, using environmental statements according to the European Union Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) as example. The information management approach is illustrated along three basic elements: stakeholder analysis and information requirement analysis (representing information demand), XML-based document engineering (modeling information supply), and IT supported reporting system (cross matching information supply and demand). As a result, environmental statements could be developed from universal documents on print media and thus being a mere EMAS requirement to valuable environmental communication vehicles which provide substantial and reliable information in a tailored fashion and are available on various media — due to an underlying single source cross media principle.