Green Knowledge Management zur Unterstützung ökologischer Nachhaltigkeit

Sustainability, environmental management and green initiatives are topics which gradually developed into trends since the late 1980s, not only in research institutions, but also in public and private organizations. While the usage of energy and other resources are increasing, these organizations search for new possibilities to reduce the economic, ecologic and social burdens and consequences of office and production environments for employees and nature. While certified environmental management systems were established already in the 1990s, green approaches and technologies are only about 10 years old and steadily developing. Decisions about a fitting strategy and the support of suitable measures inside an organization always require knowledge provided for the decision makers. Furthermore it is of importance to record the environmental consequences of the operational business and to not only record data and information, but to create a context and deduce the knowledge for future activities.
Based on this situation, the work addresses the main research question of how „classical“ knowledge management might be further developed or transformed into
Green Knowledge Management and how it addresses the goals of sustainability, especially ecological sustainability, environmental management and green approaches alike? The definition of Green Knowledge Management consists of five factors, which are discussed systematically, explored conceptually and documented with the help of practical examples.
Different knowledge management models and their respective building blocks are analyzed to deduce how knowledge processes might interact with environmental ones as well as green aspects. Also different types of knowledge management systems are analysed for their application possibilities. A planning and decision making tool in form of a three dimensional cube, the “Green Knowledge Management Cube” is introduced on a conceptual level and documented with the help of exemplary implementations. An additional aspect for the development of Green Knowledge Management bases on the intensive analysis of environmental information systems and the possibilities for extending these systems to environmental knowledge systems. The work presents a model of an environmental knowledge system called UmweltWiS. The logic of the system applies semantic technologies to provide a flexible and extensible structure to integrate public linked open data sources with an environmental background. The UmweltWiS concept is designed to be applicable in different application scenarios, in public and private context. This is documented with the help of three use case scenarios of forestry, material science and modern industry 4.0 production environments. At the end of the work it is discussed how Green Knowledge Management may address the recycling and reduction of knowledge to provide possibilities for reusability. The reduction of knowledge supports the prevention of redundant knowledge fragmentation or the usage of outdated knowledge.