420 About the Authors. About the Authors

420 About the Authors About the Authors Gilbert Ahamer, born on April 21, 1960 in Salzburg, married, two sons. Graduated in Technical Physics, finish...
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420 About the Authors

About the Authors Gilbert Ahamer, born on April 21, 1960 in Salzburg, married, two sons. Graduated in Technical Physics, finished two post graduate studies on Technical Protection of Environment and on Economics and Business Administration and received his PhD at the Faculty for Mechanical Engineering at Graz University of Technology. He is an Authorised Consultant for Technical Physics; has worked for the Federal Environment Agency, Vienna since 1996; lectures at several Austrian Universities; and acts currently as a Pre-Accession Adviser on Air Quality to the Slovak Republic. He has developed quantitative tools for assessing air emissions for different bodies on the local, regional and national levels. His main professional interests are E3 modelling: environment - energy - economy. Hans-Knud Arndt received a Diploma in Business Administration from the University of Hamburg in 1990. He completed his PhD thesis on environmental management information systems at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1997. Since 1997 he has been an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at Humboldt University. Dr. Hans-Knud Arndt has conducted research projects in the areas of environmental management systems, environmental information systems and meta data information systems, as well as eco-balancing and environmental cost accounting. His list of publications includes books and papers on related topics. Victor P. Belogurov, Associate Professor, head of a sector of the Ukrainian Research Institute of Ecological Problems, deputy of commander of NGO Emergency Rescue Service of Kharkov, and a specialist in information systems design in the areas of ecological monitoring (since 1972) and emergency management. He has authored or coauthored more then 80 research articles, books and standards, and is the head developer of an automated control system for the water protection complex on the Seversky Donets river—the first system for environmental management in the former USSR. At present his primary interest is the development GIS technologies for the solution of public safety problems. Joachim Benz studied agricultural sciences at the Technical University in Munich. From 1979 until 1984 he was employed as a scientist at the Technical University in Munich, in the departments of grassland, mathematics, and EDP. In 1988 he got his PhD from the Technical University of Munich. From 1984 till 1990 he worked as a scientist at the GSF - Research Centre for Environment and Health near Munich in the research fields of mathematical modeling and information sciences. In 1990 he moved to the University of Kassel, to the faculty of agriculture, Copyright © 2001, Idea Group Publishing.

About the Authors 421

rural development and environmental protection, where he is working as a senior scientist. His main research fields are mathematical modeling of ecosystems and biometrics. He is also responsible for the electronic data processing in the faculty. Since 1992, he has been head of the research project ECOBAS (an information service in ecological modeling) which is recognized worldwide and is now supported officially by the International Society for Ecological Modeling (ISEM). Joachim Benz has published intensively in books, reports, and scientific journals. He gives lectures and classes on ecological modeling at the University of Kassel. Thomas Blaschke studied Geography and Applied Geographic Information Systems Technology at Salzburg University, Austria and holds an MSc and a PhD in Geography. After his studies, he worked as a GIS manager at the Bavarian Academy for Nature conservation and Landscape Management in Germany. From 1994 to 1998 he was a lecturer at the Department of Geography and Geoinformation, University of Salzburg, and since 1995 he has been the education manager of the UNIGIS distance learning programme. In 1998 and 1999 he worked as a senior research fellow at the Department of Geographical and Environmental Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Currently, Dr. Blaschke works as a research manager at ZGIS, the Centre for Geographic Information Processing Salzburg, University of Salzburg. Connie Blok is assistant professor of Visualisation in the Division of Geoinformatics, Cartography and Visualisation of the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC) in Enschede, The Netherlands. She is also a member of the editorial board of the Netherlandsí Cartographic Journal and contributes to the activities of the Commission on Visualisation and Virtual Environments of the International Cartographic Association (ICA). Her main research interests are in dynamic visualisation of geospatial phenomena and in perceptive and cognitive issues related to geospatial visualisation. E-mail: [email protected]. Azedine Boulmakoul received a PhD and Habilitation. He supervised research degrees in computer engineering at the Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France, in 1990 and 1994, respectively. He received an Award with his research group (INRETS), from French Academy of Sciences and FIAT Foundation, for works on artificial intelligence technology and urban traffic monitoring. In 1996, a part of his work at INRETS, was an invention patented as CARRE-INTEL n× 14129. In 1999, his work on the telegeomatique obtained the R&D Maroc award. He is presently a professor of Computer Sciences, at the Mohammedia Faculty of Sciences and Technologies—Morocco, where he is responsible for the Computer Sciences and Transportation Systems Laboratory. Virginia Brilhante’s first degree is in Computer Science, having started her career as a software engineer in industry. She then became a lecturer in the Computing Science Department, University of Amazonas, Brazil, a position that she still holds today. Her first involvement with Environmental Sciences was through a forestry research project held in the National Institute for Research of the Amazon

422 About the Authors

(INPA, Brazil), as member of the computational modelling team. She received an MSc degree in Information Technology: Knowledge-based Systems from the (former) Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh, her dissertation was on uncertainty representation in ecological models. She is now pursuing a PhD degree in the Division of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, doing research on ecological modelling automation. Mario Christ received a Diploma in Business Administration from the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 1999. Since 1999, he has been a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Distributed Information Systems, Berlin-Brandenburg. He is supposed to receive his PhD degree in 2001. During his PhD studies he has also worked at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. His list of publications includes papers on environmental information systems, recommender systems, Web personalization, and related topics. Volker Diegmann, born in 1963. Speaks German and English. Education: 1985 - 1992; Studies in Physics at University of Freiburg, final degree: Diploma Physics. His professional experience (selection) includes: Research in simulation of optical problems in solar energy conversion; development of a practical numerical method to show spatial distribution of pollution concentration; project manager of the development and marketing of a program tool for estimation traffic induced air and noise pollution in cities (IMMIS); various studies on traffic induced air pollution in cities. Professional position: managing director IVU Umwelt GmbH. Andreas Fick works in the Institute of Applied Informatics of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. His research topic deals with deployment of machine learning methods for modelling of dynamic systems. His particular topic is learning of models by time series by usage of cognition psychologic perceptions. Stefan Göbel received a diploma in computer science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany in 1997. Then he started to work as a researcher in the GIS department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics. His main interests are in the field of Web-based (metadata) information systems for geospatial data and information visualization. The topic of his graduation deals with graphicinteractive user guidance to geospatial data archives. Within this domain he is the author of numerous technical articles, has given several scientific seminars and has organized a lot of workshops, on metadata in the context of InGeoForum. Jorge Carlos Marx Gómez, born 1960. Studied technical computer science (major in computer architecture and software engineering) and industrial engineering and management (Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen) at the Technische Fachhochschule of Berlin (major in business information systems). Graduated 1987 and 1989 with masters degrees. Since April 1988 he has been a designer engineer for hardware and software at DeTeWe AG & Co. in the telecommunications area. Since May 1998 he has been studying for a doctorate at the University of Magdeburg, Institute of Technical and Business Information Systems. Subject: Recycling Program Planning Using Softcomputing Methods.

About the Authors 423

Gerard Govers is co-director of the Laboratory for Experimental Geomorphology at the K.U.Leuven. His research work focuses mainly on the experimental and field study of soil erosion processes and the distributed modelling of land surface processes using GIS at various temporal and spatial scales. He has coordinated several national and international research projects, including the EU-funded TERON (assessment of tillage erosion in Europe) and PESERA (Pan-European Soil Erosion Risk Assessment) projects. He teaches courses on fluvial geomorphology and GIS and is secretary of the ESSC (European Society for Soil Conservation). Franck Guarnieri is a scientific officer in Ecole des Mines de Paris. He is specialized in environmental modeling and simulation methodology, and in the design and the development of advanced software systems for environmental simulation, computer-aided methodology and computer-aided design. He is involved in several European R&D projects dealing with natural hazards (behavior modeling, risk assessment, decision support) related to forest fires, floods and volcanoes. Eberhard Gülch studied Surveying at the University of Stuttgart. In 1993 he finished his PhD on the automatic generation of digital terrain models at the Institute of Photogrammetry, University of Stuttgart. In 1995 he was appointed Docent for Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. The last four years he has been the leader of the Building Extraction Group at the Institute of Photogrammetry, University of Bonn and responsible for the semiautomatic building extraction system InJECT. Eberhard Gülch has now joined INPHO GmbH, Stuttgart and is responsible for the automation in cartographic feature extraction. Oliver Günther received a Diploma in Industrial Engineering from the University of Karlsruhe in 1984, and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985 and 1987, respectively. Since 1993 he has been Professor of Information Systems at Humboldt University. Professor Günther has conducted research projects in the areas of database management, distributed information management, geographic and environmental information systems, as well as knowledge-based systems. His list of publications includes ten books and more than 90 papers on related topics. He is Associate Editor of several journals and has served on more than 40 conference program committees. Professor Günther held visiting faculty positions at the University of Cape Town, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications in Paris. He serves as a consultant and board member to various government agencies and industrial companies. Jürgen Hesselbach was born 1949 in Stuttgart. He studied from 1968 to 1975 Mechanical Engineering at the University of Stuttgart and finished his PhD thesis at the Institute of Control Technique of Machine Tools in 1980. Afterward he joined the Department of Industrial Equipment of the Robert Bosch company. From 1990 to 1998 he was head of the Institute of Production Automation and Handling Technology at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Since 1999, he has been the head of the Institute of Machine Tools and Production Technology.

424 About the Authors

Lorenz M. Hilty manages the R&D programme “Sustainability in the Information Society” at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA), St. Gallen, and is professor for Business Information Systems at Solothurn University of Applied Sciences, Olten, Switzerland. He finished his postdoctoral thesis (habilitation) on environmental information processing at the Informatics Department of Hamburg University in 1997. He is the author of more than 50 publications in this field. In 1993, he founded the special interest group “Environmental Management Information Systems” in the German Informatics Society. Since 1996, he has also been deputy chairman of the expert committee “Informatics in Environmental Protection” of the German Informatics Society. He was recently appointed the Swiss delegate to the Technical Committee “Computers and Society” (TC 9) of the IFIP. Alexander Huber, born 1970. Studied industrial engineering and management (Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen) at the Technical University of Berlin (major in logistics) and at the University of California at Berkeley (major in Corporate Finance). Graduated 1997 with a master’s degree. Since April 1997 he has been consultant at Andersen Consulting in the business-process area. Consulting experience in the automotive and process industries and postal services. Since May 1999 he has been studying for a doctorate at the University of Magdeburg, Institute of Technical and Business Information Systems. Subject: Disassembly Planning and Control. He has a scholarship from the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Dr. Uwe Jasnoch has been the head of the Graphics Information Systems department of Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (Fraunhofer-IGD) since September, 1998. His research activities lie in the domain of open distributed environments and information management. Within this domain, he is author of numerous scientific articles; he organized several workshops and gave different industrial and scientific seminars and tutorials. Dr. Jasnoch received a diploma in computer science from the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1989. He then worked for one year as a software engineer with Philipps Kommunikations Industrie (PKI) AG. His scope of duties comprised the realization of software engineering methods and the construction of network test environments in the development area of PKI AG. Gunnar Jürgens. Born 1970, Studies: Environmental Engineering at Technical University of Berlin, Germany. Employed since 1997 at Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering in Stuttgart, Germany. Main areas of scientific work: Applied science in the context of supporting the effective handling of environmental information in environmental management systems, material flow management. Vera Kamp. Educational background: Abitur 1985 in Bielefeld, Germany, Diploma in Computer Science at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. Since 1993, PhD candidate at the Informations Systems research group, University of Oldenburg, Germany. Professional experience: Consulting in the area of health care information systems. Coordination of the central themes “Epidemiological Research” and “Cancer Registry Databases” within the Cancer-Registry of Lower-

About the Authors 425

Saxony, Germany. Scientific Research Assistant at the Information Systems research group, University of Oldenburg, Germany. Pavlos A. Kassomenos has been working in the areas of air pollution and meteorology since 1984. He participated in 70 research projects most of them funded from the European Union (DGs XI, XII, XIII, XVI). He has published 31 scientific papers in referred journals and he has participated in 23 International Conferences. Recently he was elected as an Assistant Professor in the University of Ioannina, NW Greece. Mohamad Kayyal was born in Damascus, Syria in 1963. He obtained his bachelor degree (BSCE) in Civil Engineering in 1985 and master’s degree (MSCE) in 1986 from the University of Texas at Austin. He was awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy Degree (PhD) from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991. Dr. Kayyal is a Registered Professional Engineer in Texas, Ontario and Quebec, Canada, and an Associate Environmental Auditor in the Environmental Auditor Registration Association (EARA) based in the UK. In 1996, Dr. Kayyal joined Damascus University as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Civil Engineering. Andree Keitel: 1972 - 1983: Studies in biology and scientific work in ecological research programs at the University of Hohenheim. 1984 -1989: Management of ecological monitoring programs at the State Institute for Environmental Protection of Baden-Württemberg. 1989 -1992: Project manager for the Environmental Information System at the Ministry for Environment of Baden-Württemberg. Since 1992: Responsible for information management and software development at the State Institute for Environmental Protection of Baden-Württemberg. Hubert Keller is team leader of the projects MICS-INPRO (innovative process control) and MICS-ISS (intelligent sensor systems) in the Institute of Applied Informatics in the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK). His research interests are methods of machine intelligence (MI), in particular machine modelling of dynamic systems with symbolic and subsymbolic methods, object-oriented software engineering and real-time systems. Robert Laurini is a full professor in computing and the director of the Laboratory for Information Systems Engineering shared by the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) of Lyon, and the Claude Bernard University. His main interest are spatial information systems for urban and environmental planning. He is coauthor of Fundamentals of Spatial Information Systems, Academic Press, and author of Information Systems for Urban Planning, a Hypermedia Cooperative Approach, Taylor and Francis. He has authored and coauthored more than 100 scientific papers. He is associate editor of the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, and Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. He also teaches at the University of Venice (IUAV), Italy. Ruth Meyer studied computer science and biology at the University of Hamburg. From 1995 to 1998 she participated in the research project MOBILE.

426 About the Authors

Since 1997 she has been a research assistant at the Department of Computer Science, University of Hamburg, where she is currently working on her dissertation in the field of agent-based simulation. Dr. Andreas Möller, born in 1964, studied computer science at the Universities of Passau, Kiel and Hamburg from 1987 to 1995. In 1995 he got his degree as Dipl. Informatiker from the University of Hamburg, Department of Computer Science. Since 1995 he has worked as research assistant at the department of computer science, University of Hamburg. In January 2000 he got his PhD. He has worked on several research projects, i.e., a research project called material flow management for a medium trading company. Today he works in a post-doctoral position at the department of computer science at the University of Hamburg as well as a project leader for software development at the ifu Hamburg GmbH. His main interest lies in the field of developing information systems for environmental and cost accounting purposes. Bernd Müller works in the Institute of Applied Informatics in the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK). He has worked in the field of Computational Intelligence methods for process control since 1995. Aldo Napoli is a researcher in environmental phenomenon modelling. He is currently working on methodologies and tools for forest fire risk assessment. He is involved in several European R&D projects related to Earth Observation and Geographical Information System. He is also preparing a PhD about information modelling in a Problem Solving Environment for modelling support. His research aims to formalise information from experiments in order to support the different steps of forest fire behaviour modelling. Patrick Job Ogao is a PhD student in the Division of Geoinformatics, Cartography, and Visualization at the International Institute for Aerospace Surveys and Earth Sciences (ITC), Enschede, The Netherlands. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Surveying and Photogrammetry from the University of Nairobi, Kenya and a Masters of Science degree in Geoinformatics from ITC. At present his research work is on the use of cartographic animations for tasks in exploration and communication of spatiotemporal information. Samuel Olampi is project leader in Ecole des Mines de Paris. He is specialized in the design and the development of Decision Support System for risk and safety management. He is involved in several R&D projects dealing with modeling, metrology, telematic, Geographical Information System and Remote sensing. Prof. Bernd Page holds degrees in Applied Informatics from the Technical University (TU) of Berlin, Germany and from Stanford University, USA. Prof. Page was employed as a scientific associate in the Environmental Information System Group at the German Federal Environmental Agency in Berlin before he was appointed professor for Applied Informatics in the Computer Science Department at the University of Hamburg, where he is doing research and teaching in the fields

About the Authors 427

of computer simulation and Environmental Informatics. Prof. Page has been granted a variety of research and development funds for Environmental Informatics projects from public as well as private institutions. He was cofounder and year long chairman of the working group “Informatics for Environmental Protection” in the German Computer Society (GI). Claus Rautenstrauch is a full professor of business information systems at the Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany. He studied computer science at the University of Dortmund. He is Doctor of management science and finished his habilitation thesis 1995 (comparable to tenure) about integrated manufacturing and recycling planning and control at the University of Münster. His research fields are green manufacturing, manufacturing planning and control, integration of information systems, and advanced techniques for system development. Dave Robertson did his first degree in ecological science. He subsequently shifted to work in what was then the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, now merged into a broader Division of Informatics. He specialises in forms of automation for modelling and synthesis, often working with very high level descriptions of systems. This has been applied in different forms to many domains, from the design of safety shutdown systems to potato crop management, but his favourite applications are still in ecology. His current main research grants are in knowledge management, dependable computing, multi-agent experimentation and Web site synthesis. Arno Rolf, born 1942, studied economics at the University of Münster and the University of Hamburg. Afterwards he worked in consulting companies and in a publishing house. Today Arno Rolf is a Professor at the University of Hamburg, Department of Computer Science, where he has taught since 1986. Previously he taught from 1980 to 1986 at the University of Bremerhaven. His main fields of interests include technology assessment, environmental management and commercial information technology. Arno Rolf has authored many other articles and books. Thomas F. Ruddy is a research fellow at Solothurn University of Applied Sciences, Olten. After earning his BA from St. Lawrence University, Canton NY, USA, Thomas worked in the German automotive and electric utility sectors. He has written numerous articles for trade publications and more recently has presented papers on environmental topics at academic conferences in Canada and Austria. Last year he completed a study on how the South mistrusts the North for the latter’s insistence on ecological standards at the World Trade Organization and edited an on-line newsletter on climate change for the EU project ASIS (Alliance for a Sustainable Information Society). Thomas Schütz was born in Hanover, Germany. He has led study of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Hanover. He is an Assistant professor at the department of Neuroanatomy at the Hanover Medical School. His Doctoral Dissertation was on automatic identification of neuroanatomical structures in Computerized Tomographies and Magnetic Resonance Images. He is the Head of the

428 About the Authors

development group for the Catalogue of Data Sources at the Ministry for Environment of Lower Saxony and the Head of the Section for General Affairs Information and Documentation at the German Federal Environmental Agency (Umweltbundesamt). He is also Project officer of the HUDA project. Jörg v. Steinaecker. Born 1996, Studies: Industrial engineering and Management at University and technical university of Hamburg, Germany Employed since 1996 at Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering in Stuttgart, Germany. Main areas of scientific work: Applied science in the context of production management, supply chain management and environmental material flow management with respective IT-systems. Heiner Stuckenschmidt studied computer science at the University of Bremen. During his studies he together with others developed the “Elwira” approach for supporting production integrated environmental control with knowledge-based methods. In 1998 he finished his master’s on the specification of uncertain reasoning which received a best thesis award. He participated in several projects on the development of an environmental and geographic information systems for the state of Bremen. Since 1999 he works as researcher and lecturer at the intelligent systems group at the university of Bremen. His research interests include the design of uncertain reasoning systems, the use of formal ontologies in intelligent information systems and the application of knowledge-based methods in environmental applications. Nick A. Theophilopoulos has been directing and managing research projects in the areas of telematics in transport and environment for the last twenty years. He has been heavily involved in the areas of emergency management and he has participated in more than ten large projects dealing with this subject, primarily funded by the European Union. He has published numerous papers and articles and he has presented emergency management and other subjects in international conferences. Lately, he is managing a research and development group under IMPETUS, where they develop similar systems for environmental and other purposes. Klaus Tochtermann studied Computer Science (1985-1991) at Kiel University and Dortmund University (Germany). He has a diploma (1991) and PhD (1995) from Dortmund University. In 1996, he did research as a visiting scientist at the Center for the Study of Digital Libraries at Texas A&M University (USA). In 1997 he joined the FAW - Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing in Ulm, Germany, as deputy head of the Environmental Systems division and has been head of the division since 1998. His fields of interest are hypermedia and telematics, geographical information systems, environmental information systems, knowledge management. Grigorios Tsoumakas is a postgraduate student in the School of Artificial Intelligence in the University of Edinburgh. He received his Informatics degree in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1999. His research interests focus on approximate reasoning and machine learning methodologies for the design of knowledge based systems in environmental applications. He is a member of the

About the Authors 429

Greek Society for Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Artificial Intelligence Society of the Division of Informatics in the University of Edinburgh. Kristof Van Oost obtained a master’s degree in Physical Geography at the Catholic Uniiversity of Leuven ñ Belgium in 1997. At present he is an assistant at the Laboratory for Experimental Geomorphology (Catholic University Leuven). His teaching activities include GIS and geomorphology. His PhD-research focuses on the modeling of erosion and sedimentation processes at the scale of parcels and small catchments. Anton Van Rompaey obtained a master’s degree in Physical Geography at the Catholic Uniiversity of Leuven ñ Belgium in 1996. In 1997 he was involved in a research project at the Laboratory for Experimental Geomorphology (Catholic University Leuven ñ Belgium) related to tillage and water erosion in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy. At present he is a research assistant at the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders. His PhD-research focuses on the possibilities and constraints of geomorphic modelling at a regional and national scale. Ubbo Visser is an Assistant Professor (C1) at the Center for Computing Technologies a the University of Bremen, Germany. After receiving his master’s in Landscape Ecology in 1988 he was employed at the Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Münster as a research assistant until 1991. He became a research fellow from 1991-1996, and was technical project leader for PRO_PLANT (a plant protection advisory system) and received his doctorate in 1995 (Dr. rer. nat.). From 1996-1997 he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Queensland University of Technology. From July 1997 until October 1998 he worked at TZI as Managing Director for the Intelligent Systems Group. He received national awards for innovative software solutions and has numerous national and international publications. Dr. Visser also is cofounder of a new development group (formed by leading software developers for the horticultural industry) who are working together to develop a set of software standards and guidelines for the horticultural and agricultural industry. He is also a Senior Partner of the newly founded International Knowledge Discovery Institute (IKDI), which offers research and consultant services in the area of text and data mining. IKDI is an international network of researchers, consultants and academics using the latest technology for knowledge discovery in databases. Ioannis Vlahavas is an associate professor at the Department of Informatics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He received his PhD degree in Logic Programming Systems from the same University in 1988. During the first half of 1997 he was a visiting scholar at the Department of CS at Purdue University. He specializes in logic programming, knowledge based and AI systems and he has published more than 50 papers, five book chapters and co-authored two books. He teaches logic programming, AI, expert systems, and DSS. He has been involved in more than 10 research projects, leading most of them. He is a member of the Greek Computer Society, IEEE and Association for Logic Programming.

430 About the Authors

Thomas J. Vögele is a research scientist at the Center for Computing Technologies at the University of Bremen, Germany. After having received his master’s degree in hydrogeology from the Free University of Berlin in 1990, Mr. Voegele became research assistant at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in Berkeley, California. Between 1991 and 1996, Mr. Voegele worked for environmental consulting companies (Woodward-Clyde Consultants, Oakland; Weiss Associates, Emeryville) and research institutes (Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Livermore) as a specialist for environmental modeling, data analysis and data visualization. Between 1996 and 1998, Mr. Voegele was project manager at ESS GmbH, an Austrian software company specialized in GIS and on-line information systems. In 1998, he joined the Center for Computing Technologies where he works on the conceptualization and implementation of on-line information systems, GIS based applications, and the development of innovative methods for the integration of geospatial data. Kristina Voigt graduated in food chemistry from the Technical University in Berlin in 1979. From 1980 to 1983 she worked in the Environmental Chemicals Department at the German Environmental Protection Agency (UBA) in Berlin. In 1983 she moved to the GSF National Research Center for Environment and Health in Munich. There her main task is the testing and evaluation of chemical-relevant and environmental-relevant datasources (on-line databases, CD-ROMs, Internet resources). Since 1997 she has been in the Institute for Biomathematics and Biometry. There her main task lies in the research field of environmetrics and information management. In 1997 she received her PhD at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Prof. Gasteiger, Computer-Chemistry-Centre). She is a member in the Management Committee of the Special Interest Group, “Informatics in Environmental Protection” in the German Society for Informatics, the Editorial Board of On-line Information Review, Organizing Committees and refereeing boards of international conferences like the International On-line Meeting in London, the ECO-INFORMA, and the Environmental Informatics Conferences. She is currently giving lectures in the Faculty of Environmental Sciences at the University of Lueneburg. Holger Wache studied Computer Sciences at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. From 1992 until 1996 he worked at the Intelligent Systems Department of the German Research Center of Artificial Intelligence. Since 1996 he has held the position of researcher at the Intelligent Systems Department which is part of the Center of Computing Technologies at the University of Bremen. His main research interests are knowledge representation, especially semantics and ontologies, and (semantic) data integration. Gerhard Welzl graduated in mathematics from the Technical University in Munich in 1971. Since 1972 he has worked at the GSF - National Research Center for Environment and Health, first in the Institute of Medical Informatics and Health Systems Research. In 1997 he moved to the Institute of Biomathematics and Biometrics where he is the head of the working group “biostatistics.” The objective of his work is to assist in understanding processes, structures and mechanisms in domains of environmental sciences (biosciences) where variability and uncertainty

About the Authors 431

play an essential part and therefore elevated statistical methods are needed. He is published in the field of biostatistics, chemometrics and ecometrics in several textbooks, proceedings and scientific journals. He holds lectures at the Technical University of Munich in Biostatistics. Karsten v. Westernhagen studied Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Braunschweig from 1990 to 1996. From 1996 to 1998 he worked as an assistant at the Institute of Production Automation and Handling Technology. Since 1999, he has been working at the Institute of Machine Tools and Production Technology. He is working on the fields planning and control of disassembly and recycling systems, simulation, variant management and automation of disassembly processes. Götz Wiegand, born in 1948. Languages: German, English. Education: 19681974: Wirtschafts-Ingenieur, Dipl.-Wirsch.-Ing. (Darmstadt), Dr.-Ing. (Berlin). Professional experience (selection): Assistant at Institut für Statistik und Ökonometrie at Technical University, Berlin; Developed models for air-pollution dispersion in streets; Statistical problems of air-pollution time series; Various studies on traffic induced air pollution in cities. Professional position: managing director IVU Umwelt GmbH. Educational background: Abitur 1985 in Bielefeld, Germany; Diploma in Computer Science at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany; since 1993 PhD candidate at the Informations Systems research group, University of Oldenburg, Germany. Professional experience: Consulting in the area of health care information systems; coordination of the central themes “Epidemiological Research” and “Cancer Registry Databases” within the Cancer-Registry of LowerSaxony, Germany; Scientific Research assistant at the Information Systems Research Group, University of Oldenburg, Germany Volker Wohlgemuth, born in 1966, studied computer science at the universities of Hamburg and Christchurch, New Zealand from 1991 to 1997. In 1997 he got his degree as Dipl. Informatiker from the University of Hamburg. Since 1997 he has worked as research assistant at the department of computer science, social and applied oriented unit, University of Hamburg as well as senior software developer at the ifu Hamburg GmbH. His research interests lie in the fields of modelling and simulating environmental business systems. Born in 1964, Dr. Karine Zeitouni is PhD graduate from the University of Paris VI. She is presently Assistant Professor at the University of Versailles-SaintQuentin, and Researcher at the PRISM Laboratory, where she is in charge of the Geographical Database Team. Her main research interest lies in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) domain, and especially in: Geographical Databases and GIS Implementation, GIS Application to transport and environment areas, and Spatial Data Mining and Spatial Analysis. She is member of many program committees of international and national conferences. She has recently co-organised a workshop on spatial data mining and risk analysis.