B. Factors, such as substances, energy, noise, radiation or waste, including radioactive waste, emissions, discharges and other releases into the
environment, affecting or likely to affect the elements of the environment referred to in (a);
•Factor – factor in this sense should simply be taken to mean something that has an effect on an element of the environment.
It is important to note at this stage that it is possible for an ‘element’ to be a ‘factor’, for instance, water will become a ‘factor’ in an incidence of
flooding. Equally, a ‘factor’ may also be an ‘element’.
•Substances – includes all material/matter, natural or synthetic, for example chemicals, pharmaceuticals, hormones, antibiotics, oil, particulates, gases, liquids. A European definition of substances states: ‘substances means any chemical element and its compounds, as they occur in the natural state or as produced by industry, whether in solid or liquid or gaseous form’
•Energy – can be expressed in traditional scientific language, as thermal, chemical, electrical, kinetic, potential, light, and sound. Common usage for the term centres on power generation, oil-fired, coal-fired, gas-fired, nuclear and renewable energy (wind power, solar energy etc). However, energy is not restricted to large-scale power plants and electricity generation. It also includes heat (heat, in the form of hot water emitted into a river for example, can have a drastic affect on the plants, animals and fish living in the vicinity). Energy will include sunlight, geothermal energy, radio waves, microwaves etc.
•Noise – although noise is itself energy, it is included here separately. It was also specifically mentioned in the original European Directive on Environmental Information in 1990 (1990/313/EEC) and in the original UK EIR in 1992. Noise is subjective, localised and transient. A simple dictionary definition of noise is ‘a sound, especially one that is loud, unpleasant, or disturbing’. Noise also includes vibrations (Environmental Protection Act, 1990, s79(1)(g)). Many different laws and standards in the UK relate to noise. Examples include construction noise, transport noise, noise from aircraft, noise from premises, occupational noise, noise-making equipment, day time noise, evening noise, night-time noise.
•Radiation or waste, including radioactive waste – radiation can be natural (sun, cosmic rays, radioactive minerals), or man-made. There are two main types of radiation: ionising and non-ionising. Ionising radiation is either particulate (alpha, beta, neutrons) or electromagnetic (x-rays, gamma rays).
Non-ionising radiation consists of electromagnetic radiation from extremely low frequency (ELF) to ultraviolet (UV).
•Waste – waste can be broadly interpreted to mean anything discarded. This would include household waste, industrial waste and commercial waste (which are collectively described as Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)); construction and demolition wastes; mining and agricultural wastes; sewage sludge and dredged spoils; and Special Waste, hazardous, toxic waste. The waste sector is highly regulated and the definition of waste can be controversial. For instance, if ‘waste’ is to be used to generate power through incineration, it has been argued that this therefore allows it to be categorised as fuel as opposed to waste (at the time of writing, it is classified as waste until full recovery, i.e. combustion, is complete).
There are many categories of waste, and special rules/prohibitions apply to transboundary movement of wastes (Basel Convention, 1992). The Environment Agency regulates waste in the UK and has a good section on its website if further information is required.
•Radioactive waste – radioactive materials are used in many situations, settings and industries and are more widespread than you might think.
Radioactive materials are used in common products such as the luminous dials on watches,ceramic glazes and smoke detectors. Radioactive waste is generated by hospitals, pharmaceutical industry, research establishments, and of course the nuclear power generation industry. Radioactive waste is
categorised as either High-level Waste (HLW), Intermediate-Level Waste (ILM), Low-Level Waste (LLW) or Very-Low-Level Waste (VLLW). VLLW is disposed
of in landfill or by incineration; LLW is disposed of at a facility at Drigg, near Sellafield. ILW and HLW are both stored on-site, and there is currently no
government policy for the disposal of ILW and HLW.
•Emissions, discharges and other releases – a common, widely quoted definition of emission comes from the European IPPC Directive: ‘emission shall mean the direct or indirect release of substances, vibrations, heat or noise from individual or diffuse sources (…) into the air, water or land’. ‘Discharges’ is not expressly defined in legislation; however, common usage of the term in this context suggests it is generally reserved (although not exclusively) for liquid releases into water. A definition for ‘releases’ is available from the Environmental Protection Act 1990 which states, ‘…release includes – (a) in relation to air, any emission of the substance into the air; (b) in relation to water, any entry (including any discharge) of the substance into water; (c) in relation to land, any deposit, keeping or disposal of the substance in or on land…’
•affecting or likely to affect the elements of the environment referred to in (a) - information about the factor will not be environmental information unless the factor is affecting or likely to affect the elements of the environment, although it is hard to imagine when a factor would not have such an effect. There is no indication that the effect must be detrimental or large scale, so it may be minimal or negligible. The test for ‘likely to affect’ is that the effect must be substantially more than remote. However, it need not be more likely than not.
“The definition of environmental information should be clarified so as to encompass information in any form on the state of the environment, on
factors, measures or activities affecting or likely to affect the environment or designed to protect it, on cost-benefit and economic analyses used within the
framework of such measures or activities and also information on the state of human health and safety, including the contamination of the food chain,
conditions of human life, cultural sites and built structures in as much as they are, or may be, affected by any of those matters.”
References:
http://74.6.239.67/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=what+is+information+environment&fr=yfp-t-157&fp_ip=PH&u=www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/environmental_info_reg/introductory/eirwhatisenvironmentalinformation.pdf&w=information+environment+environmental+environmentalist&d=Gjp4rd29Tcbt&icp=1&.intl=us&sig=7sVXvDCMWaE8vLyA2mkYBA--
http://74.6.239.67/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=what+is+information+environment&fr=yfp-t-157&fp_ip=PH&u=www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/environmental_info_reg/introductory/what_is_environmental_information.pdf&w=information+environment+environmental+environmentalist&d=XYhn2t29Tdep&icp=1&.intl=us&sig=NWnCbGok3Ru_26958ElaGA--
http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/Law/EIRs/EnvironmentalInformation.asp
Now, the information environment that I chose is the WORLD WIDE WEB.
What is the WorldWideWeb anyway? As according to Wikipedia, a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, English physicist Tim Berners-Lee, now the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. He was later joined by Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau while both were working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1990, they proposed using "HyperText [...] to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will", and released that web in December.
Connected by the existing Internet, other websites were created, around the world, adding international standards for domain names and the HTML. Since then, Berners-Lee has played an active role in guiding the development of Web standards (such as the markup languages in which Web pages are composed), and in recent years has advocated his vision of a Semantic Web. The World Wide Web enabled the spread of information over the Internet through an easy-to-use and flexible format. It thus played an important role in popularizing use of the Internet. Although the two terms are sometimes conflated in popular use, World Wide Web is not synonymous with Internet. The Web is an application built on top of the Internet.
What should be your role within this environment? The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in every-day speech without much distinction. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the same. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is one of the services that runs on the Internet. It is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. In short, the Web is an application running on the Internet.
As a student and so exposed with the applications roaming all around the Internet, I should be aware of what are the advantages and disadvantages of over usage of it. By that, my role in the World Wide Web is to bring the user and the applications closer by telling my peers the compensation of duelling the web, as vice versa, I should also be able to tell my peers the drawbacks of excess usage in the web. The Web can be a great partner especially those times when we are bored, we can easily sit down on our chairs, turn on our computers, and browse the internet, and then we can surf all the web applications that finds our interests. In addition, as an Information Technology student, I can use my field of study to spread information using blogs, social network applications, and the like so that people will be aware of the happenings every now and then.
How can the principles of information organization and representation help you in performing this role? In performing this role, I should be quite observant enough. As based on the facts above, Information does not stop on geographical location. To be honest, it is not that easy for me to get in touch always in the web for the reason that there are much important things that needs my concern rather than to browse the web. I may have not stated explicitly all the principles that could help me in performing the roles, yet , I do know that the ‘hidden’ principles would be an advantage for me to help me represent my field of study.
What are the challenges facing you in performing the role? How will you address these challenges? First challenge for me, if I were to convey information on the web, is the lack of time to research the true story of a certain event. I am not a web user addict, but I find myself leaning on it especially on ‘nothing-to-do’ times. To address this, obviously, I must spend my time gathering inputs first before posting it on my personal web journals. Also, information can be gathered not just by surfing the internet, I can also make use of the broadcasting technology for me to congregate more necessary inputs. And secondly, if I were to convey infos, another challenge, is my sense of consistency. You can not gather data in just one sitting, you must be steady enough for you to finish congregating data.
The web is so transparent nowadays. I myself can sometimes gain news from browsing different web applications especially yahoo. But still, vigilance is always the best tool for everything.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Www
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