Towards Digital Sustainability Reporting: An Ontology for Mapping of Indicators in GRI and ESRS

abstract

Sustainability reporting by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is gaining importance. SMEs form the backbone of European industries, and their customers rely on them to ensure regulatory compliance. In preparing sustainability reports, a combination of standards is commonly used, which encompasses overlapping yet distinct requirements on sustainability indicators. Different standards categorize shared indicators under varying topics, while they also mandate unique indicators to assess identical sustainability phenomena. This poses challenges for SMEs in reporting against multiple standards. Considerable human efforts are demanded to determine the interconnected requirements across different standards. Additionally, reporting on overlapping indicators for new standards results in significant redundant work. Mapping of indicators between different standards allows the semantic interoperability of standards by indicating matching and distinct requirements, aiding in addressing these challenges. Therefore, this paper focuses on developing an ontology for mapping indicators from two significant standards, GRI and ESRS. We introduce the Sustainability Reporting Standards Ontology (RSO). RSO formally represents environmental indicators in GRI and ESRS, and is available online. Furthermore, we provide an ontology-based mapping between indicators, supported by concrete examples that illustrate the interconnections between them.