By Elena Pérez-Miñana (Philips Research Labs)
Excerpt: In recent years there has been a fair amount of software tool development supporting a business’ environmental management system (EMS). A good summary on the most recent ones available has been published during 2011 in different issues of the Environmentalist [12,14]. It includes a plethora of tools that provide different levels of functionality, ranging from basic data management through macros embedded in an MS Excel environment (Cool farm from Unilever [4]); to a fully blown EMS software enabling an organisation to record/reduce and manage its basic resources; i.e. energy, waste, water and CO2 with the aim of minimising its environmental impact (Hara [8]).
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June 7, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Steffen Zschaler
A very interesting survey paper on tools for GHG emissions analysis/prediction. It indicates a clear disagreement in results between different tools, which clearly is a problem. The paper seems to suggest that this could be solved with more work on the tools and methodology. This clearly is a relevant paper for the workshop, although some participants may find it hard to follow, as it requires a substantive background in agriculture to be fully appreciated (I am not an expert in this field myself!).
It would have been interesting to see at least some speculation about possible sources for the vast differences between tools and calculations observed. Is this because the tools are so bad? Could it be an artefact of the specific methodology used to compare them? Is it that there is a fundamental problem in obtaining sufficient and precise input data? Is it, perhaps, something else entirely?
Furthermore, the paper suggests the study of Bayesian networks in relation to this. Again, it would have been useful and interesting to see some more detail on this and how this would help.
June 7, 2011 at 8:55 pm
Elena Perez-Minana
Hello Steffen:
thanks for your feedback. In relation to your concerns, i.e. the list of unanswered questions, I’m more than happy to go over them during the seminar, I’m afraid the limit of pages for the paper didn’t give much room to add anymore than what is already there. Regarding the potential of applying Bayesian Networks to the problem, it is an area of research I have also being working on, and will be very happy to discuss with everybody, if time allows.
Elena