Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems
The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems is an encyclopedia on the science of sustainable development and conservation of life support systems on earth. The extensive publication is published under the patronage of UNESCO.Overview
In 1996, international scientists, engineers, and policy makers were invited by the UNESCO to Washington, Tokyo, Moscow, Mexico City, Beijing and the Bahamas to generate a detailed list of EOLSS contents and achieve a global consensus and acceptance of its structure. Life support system means a natural or human constructed system that furthers the life of the biosphere in a sustainable fashion. The knowledge is structured in 21 topic areas: Earth and atmospheric sciences; Mathematical sciences; Biological, physiological and health sciences; Biotechnology; Land use, land cover and soil sciences; Tropical biology and conservation management; Social sciences and humanities; Physical sciences, engineering and technology resources; Control systems, robotics and automation; Chemical sciences engineering and technology resources; Water sciences, engineering and technology resources; Energy sciences, engineering and technology resources; Environmental and ecological sciences, engineering and technology resources; Food and agricultural sciences, engineering and technology resources; Human resources policy, development and management; Natural resources policy and management; Development and economic sciences; Institutional and infrastructural resources; Technology, information and system management resources; Area studies ; Desalination and water resources.
The way the encyclopedia is being compiled can be defined as crowdsourcing, where thousands of intellectuals from all over the world and across various academic institutions are contributing. The encyclopedia relies on strict standards of peer review and the joint Paris-based UNESCO and EOLSS secretariat manages the encyclopedia in progress. It has got a publishing wing in Oxford as well which specializes in publishing various materials such as books, e-books or scholarly subscriptions.
The web portal of EOLSS receives maximum hits from the United States and India. If each hit is assumed to originate from one unique user, then USA has about 28% and India has about 10% of the users of this portal. The number of hits falls dramatically after we consider USA and India, whereas countries like Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom each contribute almost about 5% of the total hits. This shows that people familiar with English are feeling more comfortable in utilizing this project for their educational or knowledge seeking purposes and researches. The proportion of users from states of the European Union who do not speak English as native language is about 8 percent in total. The statistics are updated as of May 2018.
