Abstract

To acquire data about the environment is a core task of environmental infrastructures. Acquired data are for selected properties of certain elements of the environment, such as the temperature of air or the height of seedlings—where temperature and height are the properties of the elements air and seedlings, respectively. Data result in measurement, the “process of empirical, objective, assignment of numbers to properties” (Finkelstein, 1982). Measurement is repeated as the properties of elements are monitored in time and space (Meijers, 1986).