JP7737167B2 - Information processing system, information processing method and program - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to an information processing system, an information processing method, and a program.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and other substances have been calculated (see Patent Document 1).

Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-164754

It is required to maintain evidence to verify the data that forms the basis for calculating emissions.

The present invention was made in light of this background, and aims to provide technology that can manage evidence related to the calculation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The primary invention of the present invention for solving the above problems is an information processing system comprising: an activity amount acquisition unit that acquires activity amounts related to greenhouse gas emissions by a business entity; a voucher acquisition unit that acquires voucher data showing evidence related to decision-making at the business entity regarding the activity amounts; an emissions calculation unit that calculates the greenhouse gas emissions amount based on the activity amounts; a correspondence database that stores information specifying the emissions amount and information specifying the voucher data in association with each other; and a voucher output unit that accepts designation of the information specifying the emissions amount, identifies the voucher data corresponding to the designated emissions amount from the correspondence database, and outputs the identified voucher data.

Other problems and solutions disclosed in this application will be made clear in the detailed description of the invention and drawings.

This invention makes it possible to manage evidence related to the calculation of greenhouse gas emissions.

1 is a diagram illustrating an example of the overall configuration of an information processing system according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of a hardware configuration of a server device 2. FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of the software configuration of the server device 2. FIG. 10 is a diagram illustrating the flow of a process for calculating an emission amount in the information processing system according to the present embodiment. 10 is a diagram illustrating the flow of output processing of evidence data in the information processing system of this embodiment. FIG.

<System Overview>
An information processing system according to one embodiment of the present invention will be described below. The information processing system of this embodiment is intended to manage supporting data related to data used to calculate greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide. The supporting data can be data indicating a decision to use an activity amount or an emission factor to calculate emissions. The supporting data can be, for example, information indicating that an internal decision-making body (such as the board of directors, or a project manager established within the company for business activities) decided whether a specific activity amount should be used to calculate emissions for a specific scope/category, or that the decision-making body decided which emission factor provided by a database provider should be used. The supporting data can be, for example, minutes of meetings of the board of directors or an internal committee, emails or chat messages from decision makers, approval data in a workflow system, etc.

Figure 1 is a diagram showing an example of the overall configuration of an information processing system according to this embodiment. The information processing system according to this embodiment includes a server device 2. The server device 2 is communicatively connected to a user terminal 1 via a communications network. The communications network is, for example, the Internet, and is constructed using a public telephone network, a mobile phone network, a wireless communication path, Ethernet (registered trademark), or the like.

Server device 2 is a computer that calculates greenhouse gas emissions. Server device 2 may be a general-purpose computer such as a workstation or personal computer, or may be logically realized using cloud computing.

The user terminal 1 is a computer used by a user, such as a smartphone, tablet computer, or personal computer. The user operates the user terminal 1 to access the server device 2 and calculate greenhouse gas emissions.

<Server device 2>
FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of the hardware configuration of the server device 2. Note that the illustrated configuration is merely an example, and other configurations may also be used. The server device 2 includes a CPU 201, a memory 202, a storage device 203, a communication interface 204, an input device 205, and an output device 206. The storage device 203 stores various data and programs, and is, for example, a hard disk drive, a solid-state drive, or a flash memory. The communication interface 204 is an interface for connecting to a communication network, and is, for example, an adapter for connecting to Ethernet (registered trademark), a modem for connecting to a public telephone network, a wireless communication device for wireless communication, a USB (Universal Serial Bus) connector, or an RS232C connector for serial communication. The input device 205 is, for example, a keyboard, a mouse, a touch panel, buttons, a microphone, or the like for inputting data. The output device 206 is, for example, a display, a printer, a speaker, or the like for outputting data. Each functional unit of the server device 2 described below is realized by the CPU 201 reading a program stored in the storage device 203 into the memory 202 and executing it, and each storage unit of the server device 2 is realized as part of the storage area provided by the memory 202 and the storage device 203.

Figure 3 shows an example of the software configuration of the server device 2. The server device 2 includes a voucher data storage unit 231, a correspondence database 232, an emission amount storage unit 233, a voucher acquisition unit 211, an activity amount acquisition unit 212, an emission amount calculation unit 213, and a voucher output unit 214.

The evidence acquisition unit 211 acquires evidence data. The evidence data is data showing evidence related to the decision-making of an entity regarding the entity's greenhouse gas emissions, and can be, for example, minutes of a board of directors meeting or an internal committee meeting, emails or chat messages from decision-makers, approval data in a workflow system, etc. The evidence data may be, for example, image data. The image data may be, for example, data captured by a camera (not shown) provided in the user terminal 1. The evidence data may be, for example, a document such as a PDF file, or a structured file such as XML. The evidence data may be data showing evidence related to decision-making regarding activity amounts, or data showing evidence related to decision-making regarding emission coefficients.

The evidence acquisition unit 211 may, for example, accept uploads of evidence data from the user terminal 1, or may acquire evidence data attached to messages such as emails or chat messages sent from the user terminal 1. Furthermore, if the user can directly operate the server device 2, the server device 2 may be equipped with a camera or scanner, and the evidence may be photographed using the camera or scanner of the server device 2. The evidence acquisition unit 211 may accept information indicating the evidence data (e.g., a URL) from the user terminal 1 and access the evidence data based on the accepted information. The evidence acquisition unit 211 can register the acquired evidence data in the evidence data storage unit 231.

The supporting evidence data storage unit 231 stores supporting evidence data. The supporting evidence data storage unit 231 can store supporting evidence data in association with, for example, supporting evidence identification information that identifies the supporting evidence, a user ID that indicates the user who registered the supporting evidence, and information that identifies the activity amount and/or emission coefficient that was the subject of decision-making. The supporting evidence data storage unit 231 can be implemented as a relational database or an object database, or as a file system (in this case, the supporting evidence identification information can be a path and file name). The supporting evidence data storage unit 231 can also store supporting evidence data in association with information that identifies the emission amount calculated based on the corresponding activity amount or emission coefficient.

The activity amount acquisition unit 212 acquires activity amounts related to greenhouse gas emissions by a business entity. The activity amount acquisition unit 212 can, for example, accept input of activity amounts (and information specifying the activity amounts) entered into a form from the user terminal 1. The activity amount acquisition unit 212 may also accept activity amounts in a format such as a CSV file. The activity amount acquisition unit 212 can also, for example, acquire image data and read the activity amounts from the image data using OCR processing.

The emission calculation unit 213 calculates the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The emission calculation unit 213 can calculate the amount of emissions by multiplying the amount of activity by an emission coefficient. The emission calculation unit 213 can calculate the amount of emissions using the amount of activity used and the emission coefficient corresponding to that amount of activity. As a general method is used for the calculation process of the emission amount, details will be omitted here. The emission calculation unit can register the calculated emission amount in the emission memory unit 233.

The emission amount storage unit 233 stores emissions. For example, the emission amount storage unit 233 can store, in association with information specifying the emission amount (emission amount specification information), information specifying the business entity (business entity specification information), time information (for example, year, month, date, etc.), type of activity amount, and emission amount. The emission amount specification information can also include time information. The emission amount specification information can also include business entity specification information. The emission amount specification information can also include the products and services that are the subject of the calculation.

The correspondence database 232 stores emission amount identification information and supporting document identification information in association with each other. The correspondence database 232 can also store information identifying activity amounts and/or information identifying emission coefficients in association with each other.

The evidence output unit 214 outputs evidence data. The evidence output unit 214 can accept the designation of emission amount identification information. For example, the evidence output unit 214 can accept the designation of time information such as the fiscal year, month, and day. The evidence output unit 214 can also accept the designation of the business entity that is the subject of the emissions, in addition to or instead of the time information. The evidence output unit 214 can also accept information that identifies the product or service to be calculated, in addition to or instead of the time information and/or the subject of the emissions. The evidence output unit 214 can identify evidence identification information that corresponds to the received emission amount identification information from the correspondence database 232, and read and output evidence data that corresponds to the identified evidence identification information from the evidence data storage unit 231.

The evidence output unit 214 can output evidence data in response to a request from a third-party certification body (auditing organization), for example. It can also identify, in response to a request from a user calculating emissions related to the GHG Protocol, evidence data corresponding to the activity amount and/or emission coefficient used as the basis for calculating the emissions from the corresponding database 232, and transmit the identified evidence data together with the emissions to the third-party certification body (its information processing device).

The evidence output unit 214 can also accept the specification of an activity amount and/or an emission coefficient in addition to the emission amount specification information. In this case, the evidence output unit 214 can identify the evidence specification information corresponding to the emission amount specification information and the specified activity amount and/or emission coefficient from the correspondence database 232, and read and output the evidence data corresponding to the identified evidence specification information from the evidence data storage unit 231.

<Operation>
FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating the flow of the emission amount calculation process in the information processing system of this embodiment.

The server device 2 accepts activity amounts, emission coefficients, and supporting data relating to activity amounts and/or emission coefficients from the user terminal 1 (S301), calculates greenhouse gas emissions based on the accepted activity amounts and emission coefficients (S302), registers the emissions in the emissions memory unit 233 (S303), stores the supporting data in the supporting data memory unit 231 (S304), and registers in the correspondence database 232 information specifying the activity amounts, information specifying the emission coefficients, emissions identification information specifying the emissions, and supporting data identification information in association with each other (S305).

Figure 5 is a diagram explaining the flow of the evidence data output process in the information processing system of this embodiment.

The server device 2 receives emission amount identification information from the user terminal 1 (S321), identifies supporting document identification information corresponding to the received emission amount identification information from the correspondence database 232, reads supporting document data corresponding to the identified supporting document identification information from the supporting document data storage unit 231 (S322), and outputs (sends to the user terminal 1) the read supporting document data (S323).

As described above, the information processing system of this embodiment can manage supporting data related to the decision to use the activity amount and/or emission factor used to calculate greenhouse gas emissions in calculating emissions, in association with the emissions amount (or activity amount and/or emission factor). Therefore, in the case of audits, third-party certification, etc., supporting data corresponding to emissions and the activity amount and/or emission factor used to calculate the emissions can be easily presented.

The present embodiment has been described above, but the above embodiment is intended to facilitate understanding of the present invention and is not intended to limit the present invention. The present invention may be modified or improved without departing from its spirit, and equivalents thereof are also included within the present invention.

For example, in this embodiment, the system is a client-server configuration, but it is also possible for the user terminal 1 to have the functions of the server device 2.

1 User terminal 2 Server device

Claims (6)

an activity data acquisition unit that acquires activity data related to greenhouse gas emissions by a business entity;
a voucher acquisition unit that acquires voucher data indicating vouchers related to decision-making at the business entity regarding the amount of activity;
an emission calculation unit that calculates the amount of greenhouse gas emission based on the amount of activity;
a correspondence database that stores information specifying the emission amount and information specifying the evidence data in association with each other;
a voucher output unit that receives designation of information that identifies the emission amount, identifies the voucher data corresponding to the designated information that identifies the emission amount from the corresponding database, and outputs the identified voucher data;
An information processing system comprising: 2. The information processing system according to claim 1,
The evidence data is minutes of a meeting;
An information processing system characterized by: 2. The information processing system according to claim 1,
The information processing system, wherein the evidence data is an email or chat message sent from a user of the business entity. 2. The information processing system according to claim 1,
a voucher data storage unit for storing the voucher data;
An information processing system characterized by: Obtaining activity data related to greenhouse gas emissions by a business entity;
acquiring evidence data indicating evidence related to decision-making at the business entity regarding the amount of activity;
calculating the amount of greenhouse gas emissions based on the amount of activity;
a step of storing the information specifying the emission amount and the information specifying the evidence data in a correspondence database in association with each other;
receiving a designation of information specifying the emission amount, identifying the evidence data corresponding to the designated information specifying the emission amount from the correspondence database, and outputting the identified evidence data;
An information processing method characterized by being executed by a computer. Obtaining activity data related to greenhouse gas emissions by a business entity;
acquiring evidence data indicating evidence related to decision-making at the business entity regarding the amount of activity;
calculating the amount of greenhouse gas emissions based on the amount of activity;
a step of storing the information specifying the emission amount and the information specifying the evidence data in a correspondence database in association with each other;
receiving a designation of information specifying the emission amount, identifying the evidence data corresponding to the designated information specifying the emission amount from the correspondence database, and outputting the identified evidence data;
A program that causes a computer to execute the following.