Sustainability Index Rating and Knowledge Management System -
A Knowledge Ecology & Sustainability Index (KESI)

NCIIA Advanced E-Team Grant Abstract:

This project will plan, design and implement a Web-Enabled Sustainability Index Rating and Knowledge Management System (SIR-KMS). This is a tool for compiling, analyzing and managing relative sustainability indices of the natural, social and economic systems in a community. As an application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for Sustainable Development (SD), the SIR-KMS will provide a template for a community to create a Knowledge Ecology & Sustainability Index (KESI). A KESI web application will allow local citizens, administrators, educators, business leaders, agencies and organizations to input, monitor and modify geographically specific Sustainability Index Factors (SIF's) through a web-based interface. Commentaries and SIF's will be associated in a “Wiki” interface metaphor. Cumulative SIF’s can be displayed as a thematic overlay to an online community map or aggregated to a regional map, and could be exported as a spatial database to a Geographic Information System, providing further analysis and decision-making tools for local planning or educational tools for promoting sustainable initiates. The interrelation of current and future development, businesses and land uses with the Rating System can help illustrate the effects of these actions on a locale’s sustainability indices. The presentation and management of this local knowledge ecology will provide educational opportunities and alternatives for building a more sustainable local community. A local knowledge ecology will evolve to help inform the local administrative decision making process, engage local participation in those decisions and educate people as to the effects those decisions have on their local natural environment, cultural institutions and economic welfare.

NCIIA Advanced E-Team Grant Narrative:

Global, national and local sustainable development programs are now being initiated after decades of degradation of the natural environment, disruption of traditional social communities and an increasing imbalance of economic systems. From the United Nations Environmental Program Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the “Agenda 21” action plan to local and state initiatives such as the Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative and Forum on Sprawl, these programs aim to illuminate the current state, future prospects and intervention strategies of socio-ecological systems. Various “ecological footprint” analyses have been developed in various contexts, but all fail to clearly illustrate the nature and extent of the impacts of an individual's development decisions. They fail to engage local participation in the evaluation and understanding of those decisions and their cumulative impacts. Moreover, they fail to engage the local participant in the ecology of knowledge required for these initiatives to accomplish their goals. To attempt to reverse the decades of ravaging effects to our social, environmental and economic systems by our unsustainable development practices, a method of measuring, analyzing and presenting the cumulative environmental impacts, true economic costs and cultural and social effects of current and future development will be developed under this grant proposal.

The Project

The SIR-KMS, together with a growing need for, accessibility to, and the leveraging of, ICT’s can assist communities move toward and succeed in fostering the goals of SD, from the community up to the nation and international level. As an innovative analysis and management instrument designed specifically for aggregating localized sustainability indices, scaling and analyzing them, the SIR-KMS and the online KESI will provide support and capacity building for local community self-determination and local government decision-making processes. It will allow industrialized as well as developing nations educate and involve communities in their own future, bringing a common sense of self-determination and a move towards innovative “knowledge societies” that support their development goals.

The methodology for SIF analysis is based on the work of a distinguished and well-established rating system developed as a method for evaluating and charting the day to day behavioral and relationship values between residential clients, their care providers and their administrative mechanisms. The Sage Hill Behavior Rating System (SHBRS)[1] can be adapted as a method to evaluate, analyze and chart environmental, social and economic systems relative sustainability against clearly established SIF indicators. Further, the use of the SHBRS methodology will produce factors relating individual and community use to the overall knowledge ecology, a measure of the dynamics of the SIR-KMS.

Built around a core technology from the upgrade and conversion of the SHBRS, the SIR-KMS will generate salient measures of sustainability using standard factor analytic and scale construction techniques. The upgrade and conversion of the SHBRS will be a primary deliverable during the term of this grant cycle. The talents of our E-Team members Laura Krahn and Jean Erickson, both Marlboro College MSIE graduates, will be invaluable for migrating the existing SHBRS technology.

The updated Sage Hill Rating System (SHRS) will become a core, patentable technology, and an analytical module that has enormous recurrent revenue potential through licensing and custom implementation for a vast array of potential markets, from KESI to medical records keeping to Behavior Rating Systems. A contractual agreement between Rod Durkin, the author of the SHBRS methodology and New England Ecologic LLC, granting full ownership rights and revenue over the SHRS in exchange for perpetual maintenance and free distribution rights within an upgraded SHBRS has been established. Further, Rod Durkin will a major role as a Team Advisor in adapting his methodology to local SIF analysis.

As Lead E-Team Member, I will research local and regional sustainability indices and existing analytical methodologies and survey and compile all available literature for use as content and text in the SIR-KMS and online KESI. I will set the direction and tone of the project development by incorporating the established global and national goals and ideals of SD into the project content. The E-Team Advisors from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Terri Willard and Laszlo Pinter will assist immeasurably in scoping the range of resources available, methods and planning for implementation and in technology transference. Faculty advisor Lisa Sieverts will provide substantial direction and assistance in developing the overall project management plan.

A significant piece of the SIR-KMS will be its ability to interact with available tools for evaluating individual, regional and national SD indices. Laszlo Pinter will be immeasurably helpful in making those connections.

The project team will design a web-based template for the online KESI. The KESI template, once initiated will provide a means of community interaction and shared local knowledge. Kevin Burke brings significant design skills to the project. This project task will deliver the information architecture framework, graphical interface design and navigational structure for the KESI template web site.

The operations of the SHRS, the SIF development and integration in the SIR-KMS, the online KESI web services and the required security for listing or storing personal preferences in the online environment require a robust data and web server to be configured. Michael Sardinas, a graduating Marlboro College MSIE student has the unique talents and qualifications to make this happen and continue to run smoothly.

Commercial Potential

The clear competitive advantage and customer appeal the SIR-KMS and online KESI have over other analytical tools is in the engagement individuals will feel by seeing specific community actions play out in the online KESI. By providing an online resource for businesses that are providing either material or services related to sustainable development, and the rating changes aggregating over time by choosing a particular business over another, choices will come to have much more immediate and engaging personal meaning in the overall SD initiative, helping to further build the Knowledge Ecology.

The following list of nations, listed in order of their calculated Ecological Footprint (EF), have scores greater than three (3) hectares per capita, nearly twice the earth's bio-capacity, given current population levels. This is the target market. Most countries have considerable Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in place, and require the greatest level of attention to sustainability issues.

USA UAE Canada Norway New Zealand Kuwait Sweden Australia Finland France Mongolia	Estonia Portugal Denmark Switzerland Belgium & Luxembourg Ireland Spain Austria Greece United Kingdom Latvia	Russia Germany Czech Republic Korea DPRP Saudi Arabia Israel Japan Lithuania Netherlands Kazakhstan Ukraine	Slovenia South Africa Poland Uruguay Slovakia Italy Hungary Mauritius Libya Argentina Belarus Chile

 

A clear development strategy will address the USA and North American market initially, beginning with very local implementations as testing areas. Primary communities with populations around 5000 would be the ideal lower limit for the KESI implementation. Dan Monks, Director of the Town of Bennington Vermont Planning Department, is excited to be a part of the team of Advisors for the project. He will provide insight on local implementation and specifics of possible indices he currently uses in making or facilitating development decisions.

Individuals who "shop" through the KESI will earn sustainability points, and perhaps discounts through the sponsored online linkages. Not only another means of generating sustainability knowledge indices, but a possible continuous revenue stream could be built from the click-through references generated by the KESI.

Organization

Future development would necessitate an organizational structure and incorporation plan to be developed as part of the business and economic planning tasks of this project. A possible future staffing growth over five to ten years could be a similar organizational list as follows:

These positions may be incorporated in-house or may be a consortium of dedicated outsourced professionals. The business planning tasks of the project will determine the ultimate organizational structure. Regardless of structure, the mission of the organization will always adhere to those same goals we have bee organized around, sustainability in our environmental, social and economic relations.

Metrics

Successful completion of the project will be measured against the following:

 

Conclusion

The project outlined for this grant proposal is part of and the logical outcome of the continuous life-long educational process to which I have engaged and dedicated myself. I will initiate and complete this project as part of my current degree work at Marlboro College, regardless of the outcome of this proposal. The excitement and support I have received when discussing the concept with professionals who have been working on this field for their entire careers tells me that this project can and will make a difference in the world. I dedicate this then to that difference, and to the better world I will leave my children.