1996 Electronics Industry Environmental Roadmap - Civil and ...

Information and Knowledge Systems
gration systems, common user interfaces, or data mapping and mining technologies. Although
data warehouses are generally operated and managed for the benefit of a single enterprise, there
appears to be no technical reason why a multi-enterprise environmental data warehouse could not
be established.
In this case, companies wishing to form the (possibly virtual) warehouse collaboratively develop
the architecture, identify the infrastructure in place to operate the warehouse, identify and
collaboratively assess tools available to support data transformation and integration, and
undertake a comprehensive training and implementation program. Once operational,
environmental specialists could access the environmental data warehouse to support decision
making associated with environmental issues.
The data warehouse, or even the corporate databases of individual companies, can be integrated
with a Web site through tools that are now emerging on the market. A common gateway
interface (CGI) linked through an application program interface (API) to an internal database can
generate scripts that manage transaction processing even through a Web-initiated connection.
Other approaches to integrating Web-based information models and other information
technology models are emerging regularly.
A number of advanced technologies are also emerging for data integration that can be integrated
into the environmental information infrastructure:
Data Mining: Data mining tools dispatch autonomous agents through targeted distributed
databases and seek to identify common patterns or threads among the data. Data mining
tools can identify patterns that previously may have been impossible to perceive given the
fragmented nature of the data.
Data Fusion: Data fusion is the art of blending, combining, filtering, comparing,
selecting, and presenting the information into a usable medium. Imagine pulling
information from disparate sources that include geopolitical data, chemical data, industry
data and fusing it for more complex analyses.
Data Consistency: Data consistency techniques search for anomalous data elements in an
effort to improve the quality and reliability of data sets.
Data Migration: Data migration techniques have been developed to automatically
migrate data when an older database system is replaced by a newer one. These techniques
are also adaptable to replicating data to optimize access times to data..
MCC has proposed a project, referred to as the Environmental Information Mall, that offers an
evolution of the Web site attributes described above, combining many of these advanced data
management tools. The establishment of an “environmental mall” for the electronics industry
takes information dissemination a step further—enabling communication and commerce among
those who provide tools and technologies to support industrial and environmental processes and
the industrial end-users who require them.
For example, a software company providing design for environment tools could offer a beta version
of their tool through the environmental mall. Users could experiment with the tool, either
on a free basis or on a limited cost basis, providing important feedback to the software
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