The Perspectives of Environmental Informatics and Systems Analysis

Information technologies are under extraordinarily rapid progress, and a number of them have not been applied to environmental management. In many cases, however, the roles of these technologies have been limited in the provision of improved convenience for system implementation and the generation of nicer presentation of system inputs and outputs. Although these roles are meaningful for extensive transfer of new methodologies and convenient access of research outcomes, they do not directly contribute to methodology development. Therefore, further development of the high performance computing and knowledge management potentials associated with artificial intelligence techniques is desired to promote long-term viability of the environmental informatics. In this paper, recent developments, advancements, challenges, and barriers associated with practices of environmental informatics research were analyzed. A number of related methodologies, applications, and policy considerations were examined. Issues of the needs for environmental systems analysis, the challenges of environmental systems modeling, and the impacts of environmental informatics were discussed. Perspectives of the environmental decision-making in 21st century were investigated, demonstrating many demanding areas for enhanced research efforts.