The information system - an advisory tool or how to select the 'right' support for DFE

Since 1996 the collaborative research center 392 at the Darmstadt University of Technology has been working in the field of DFE (design for environment). Within the last years, the research center, along with other researchers worldwide, has yielded many information resources concerning DFE. The problem nowadays is not the lack of information resources for DFE, rather that of choosing the most suitable ones for the actual problem. Therefore, an information system has been developed which provides the designer with the 'right' context-sensitive information resources. With the information system, it is possible to create different views on the information resources according to the designer's needs. To enable this, an information model with the associations between information resources and criteria to access the information resources has been developed. This information model is the basis for the information system which is implemented in the intranet of the research center. First results have shown that the designer can access the 'right' information resources efficiently and effectively.