Big Data and Environmental Management Systems

Environmental concerns are real business challenges. However, in today’s world, these concerns have enlarged to include not only the risk/cost side of the balance sheet but the “how do I make ‘green’ ($) from the green” side, as well.

Big data is defined as the set of information assets characterized by volume, velocity and variety that require specific technology and analytical methods to transform them into business value.

A mating of these two worlds is/was inevitable – the environment provides us huge amounts of data that hitherto has been difficult to gather and analyze. Today, Big Data techniques allows us to collect , analyze and make actionable these huge volumes of data. It allows individuals, governments and corporations to take a holistic view, enabling them to make predictions and take decisions.

Let us look at a few examples:

• Satellite data is being used to monitor deforestation on a global basis
• All over the US, water runoff data is being analyzed to determine sources and causes of “dead zones” in the rivers
• Air Pollution data analyzed over geographies and time allow us to determine the most optimal methods of combating the same.

These examples use quantitative data, run it through statistical models to generate probabilities of occurrence of events. Let us add a small twist to this approach – the ability to mesh this analysis with the analysis of qualitative, unstructured data. This will now make the model more robust and will take into account additional pieces of information that would otherwise have been lost. An example of this would be to mate data regarding the quality of fish / fishing in the waterway (could be anecdotal) to the runoff chemical analysis data leading us to possible cause/effect hypotheses.

Consider another scenario which involves lots of data (and analyses) and automation –if one could track changes in regulatory requirements electronically and incorporate the necessary actions in the business process via automation, while keeping a complete audit trail, one could ensure a reduction in risk, greater environmental compliance and an increase in productivity.

How an EHS Management Software could make your life easier?

The bottom line is that the data and the tools are available. For an environmentally conscious organization, it is a matter of leveraging the tools to increase operational excellence by moving big data analysis from the back room to the operational processes.