Enviroinfo2010 : Integration of Environmental Information in Europe, Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection Cologne/Bonn, Germany

"Information is the currency of democracy"Thomas Jefferson is widely associated with this quote. In the field of environmental policy/-, planning/and protection, information is essential. Without reliable information we cannot monitor or describe the state of the environment. For protection and planning we need in-depth knowledge of ecological interdependencies. Beside this, environmental information is a precondition of sustainable environmental policy. The implementation of instruments of environmental policy is linked with costs, inconvenience and restrictions. Therefore environmental policy always needs a special lobby: the well informed public and environmental information becomes the currency of sustainable environmental policy.Since 1986, the Envirolnfo conferences on Informatics for Environmental Protection focus on concepts, methods and instruments to process, analyse and interpret environmental information and support the discourse on environmental issues. The conference has developed into a mayor platform for interdisciplinary dialogue between experts from science, industry and administration and between information technology specialists and experts in processing, monitoring, analysing and interpreting environmental information. It has a strong tradition to overcome barriers between disciplines and information communities.After ten years of abstinence, the 24 th conference is again held in Bonn, this time under the headline"Integration of Environmental Information in Europe"and in cooperation with the Intergeo2010 conference on Geodesy, Geoinformation and Landmanagement in Cologne. Both conferences share a conference day in Cologne, where the Enviroinfo2010 is held as a special track of the Intergeo Conference. In this track, the state of the art of environmental information systems and geospatial infrastructures are given special attention as weIl as the challenges of the INSPIRE directive of the EU.