The conference series ISESS has been initiated by Ralf Denzer in 1995 in collaboration with Gerald Schimak (Austrian Research Center Seibersdorf, Austria) and David Russell (Penn State Great Valley, USA).
 

The reason to initiate ISESS was the increasing practical need of software support of environmental protection and research tasks. Environmental Software Systems (ESS) are an important factor in environmental research, decision support, management and policy. The subject is still growing in a multidisciplinary work environment which changes quickly. Perhaps this is the major challenge we face as the practical need for the software support of environmental protection and research tasks continues to grow.  
 

ISESS was created to be a forum in which to present and discuss the fundamentals, progress and actual trends in this area in terms of methods, tools and state-of-the-art applications. Over the years, it has also evolved into an important networking tool for academics, environmental professionals, and other interested parties. 

 
Now in its sixth incarnation, these conferences on Environmental Informatics continue to be co-sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), the world's umbrella organization of computer societies. The upcoming ISESS 2001 conference is being held at the Rocky Mountain Resort in Banff, Canada. Its predecessors were held at Penn State University, USA (1995), at Whistler Resort, Canada (1997), at the Nature Parc Soelk Valleys, Austria(1998), at the University of Otago, New Zealand (1999) and at the Grand Hotel Zell am See (2000).