Light-weight composite environmental performance indicators (LWC-EPI) concept

Abstract

Rapid environmental change requires a widely changing attitude starting from individuals over corporations to governments. A closer and more critical review of current environmental policies is needed. Corporate environmental management information systems (CEMIS) can play a major role to change attitudes by providing information that enables users to assess the current environmental impact of their processes and operations. One important question with regard to this is whether an organisation is complying with regulations. If the organisation is not complying with regulations the gap must be identified. Focusing on the growing environmental awareness and the needs of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) we shed light on the information provisioning role of CEMIS as well as on the environmental impact of SME operations as a whole. The main objective of our work is to provide a dashboard information system to control and monitor the organizations environmental performance indicators (EPI). This shall lead to a reduced gap between the estimated and current values of company's environment impact on an almost daily basis. In this chapter we will focus on explaining the concept of Light-Weight Composite Environmental Performance Indicators (LWC-EPI), providing clear terms and definitions and presenting technologies which can be used to implement it. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.