Environmental impact assessment report in Wikidata

[f...@imm.dtu.dk]

Dear Wikiciters,


I have become involved in a Danish research project called DREAMS -
Digitally supported Environmental Assessment for Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), where we will use computers to process
Environmental Assessment (EA) reports, https://dreamsproject.dk/.

These reports are made in connection with large projects that may affect
the environment and people. There is European Union legislation, but the
EAs are also made in other parts of the world. In China, 300,000 reports
are filed each year according to a reference in
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7378699

Though Wikidata is not part of the project, I have nevertheless started
to add a few of Danish EA reports to Wikidata, - and referencing a few
of them on the Danish Wikipedia. You can see an overview here:
https://people.compute.dtu.dk/faan/fnielsendreams.html

Modeling the EA reports is an interesting problem. To me as an outsider
to the EA field, it seems a bit like the wild west. I find it ironic
that scientific articles are more structured than the the usual EA
report, though legislation is involved in the latter: Finding the
reports is sometimes difficult, there are usually no identifiers, e.g.,
ISBNs or DOIs, the titles are not necessary particularly evident, the
references may be hard to track down, - if there are any..., a report
are not necessary confined to one PDF.

I am wondering if there are others that have been working within this
field, knows other efforts in the area or interested in discussing the
modeling of EA?


best regards
Finn Årup Nielsen

[phoebe ayers]

Dear Finn, 

This is not my area, but I know in the US they are called environmental impact statements, and are produced under federal law per the EPA, as well as at a state level in the 50 states. Here's a couple of guides:

https://libguides.humboldt.edu/c.php?g=303774&p=2025890

https://www.epa.gov/nepa/how-obtain-copy-environmental-impact-statement

They are extremely messy, as evidenced by the EPA (the federal agency) recommending that researchers contact a private university to find them !

Metadata wise they are legal documents and tend to get filed with government documents collections in libraries. If there's a standard metadata scheme just for EIS, I don't know what it is! But I do know there's lots of terminology in the titles that has specific meanings (final, interim, etc) but you have to know the jurisdiction's terminology/rules to know exactly what those terms mean. 

Anyway from a wikicite perspective, I'd class these with "modeling government documents". I think all of the problems you listed (inconsistent titles etc) are true for US environmental impact statements too.

Phoebe

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