Who will manage the environmental data explosion?
Locus software brings order to information chaos

The green business tsunami keeps rolling along. Sustainability. Carbon footprint. Climate change. The news is filled with eco-buzzwords and “green” is hot as public awareness of global environmental issues grows. But beyond the buzz are complex issues that must be addressed as investors, customers, government regulators and public interest groups pressure businesses to assume increased environmental responsibility. Environmental data management is now a competitive and legal necessity and companies are scrambling to track and manage their environmental performance data. Inaction can be costly, both in real dollars and in public opinion. Locus Technologies’ ePortal software makes excellence in environmental data management a reality.

Environmental Data Explosion

The environmental industry is an information-generating juggernaut. The amount of environmental data has grown exponentially over the past decade and it will continue to rapidly increase with the emergence of real-time sensing and wireless transmission technologies. By 2020, Locus estimates the environmental industry will produce more data than the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Internal Revenue Service, and the financial and health industries combined. In today’s complex, multi-regulatory world, business executives are challenged to quantify their companies’ environmental problems, manage sustainability and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, organize compliance and Health and Safety (H&S) records and accurately report to regulators. All of these tasks demand up-to-date valid data. Yet, rarely is such information well organized or easily retrieved. In fact, until recently, robust data management systems needed to capture, store, manage, and analyze environmental information simply did not exist.

Current Practice

How do companies generally handle and store their environmental information? Data is collected from a variety of sources - from consultants, contractors, labs, suppliers, customer’s own field employees, or as is more increasingly true, by remote wireless sensors. It is stored in remote locations, such as the supplier’s spreadsheets or other files on the desktop, laptop, or network server of suppliers. The customer usually has no access to, or ownership of, such data. Such large, dispersed volumes of information are difficult to track and very costly to audit without relational databases, and content or document management solutions software. If the customer does adopt environmental information management systems, the systems typically fall into one of two categories:

• Stand-alone systems that project-level consultants, staff engineers and staff geologists love, but that do not enable managers to perform corporate governance, data-mining, or forecasting tasks, or share information across a large organization or the web.
• High-end, all encompassing extensions of ERP systems, such as SAP, that can scale to support the needs of hundreds or thousands of users but that environmental manager refuse to use because they are complex and require costly additional programming to manage environmental data. Such enterprise systems are often characterized as being “a mile wide and inch deep” because they typically lack domain depth, are not offered over the web, are expensive and difficult to install and integrate, cannot be used by suppliers, and are not particularly user-friendly.

As a result, too many businesses and governmental agencies are “flying blind” when it comes to managing their environmental information. Organizations with environmental liabilities or that simply want to manage their carbon footprint often find themselves unable to reduce environmental expenditures because they are:

• Unable to effectively and responsibly manage their environmental liability and coordinate their environmental laboratories, consultants, contractors, and regulators.
• Unable to obtain an accurate accounting of their environmental problems or liabilities in order both to improve their environmental stewardship and to avoid regulatory fines.

The Locus Technologies Solution

Locus delivers Software as a Service (SaaS) environmental information management to its clients via its flagship product, ePortal, a robust web-based platform that can run various environmental applications through a Single Sign On (SSO). Locus’ ePortal leverages Web 2.0 technologies such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), mashups and vertical searches and stores and organizes all of the customer’s environmental data and information, both structured and unstructured. This information includes, but is not limited to, analytical test results, consultants’ reports, as well as sustainability, monitoring and compliance data. Individuals with the appropriate privileges (customers and their suppliers) have access to these records over the web at anytime from anywhere.

Locus clients find ePortal both easier to use and a more powerful platform than existing single application solutions such as EarthSoft, ESS, or ESP. And Locus is significantly more cost-effective than ERP-based solution such as SAP or custom-developed solutions.

Locus’ ePortal manages more environmental sites and analytical records in a single, web-based system than any of its competitors. It is poised to become the market leader by combining the best features of both stand-alone/client-server and enterprise systems. Locus’ ePortal distinguishes itself with these key features:

• An affordable, easy to use SaaS, which means there is no customer installation.
• Scalable with many key features of enterprise systems, including database synchronization and reporting capabilities.
• Expandable to accommodate easily new environmental applications such as GHG emissions management, sustainability, compliance, and associated reporting.
• Uses Web 2.0 technologies that focus on collaboration, community, and user-generated content. End users (consultants, labs, suppliers) provide the necessary content and push information to the ultimate customer or regulator.
• Balances cost and features by creating and managing its enterprise systems, then offering these via subscription as a SaaS. This is very appealing to Locus’ customer base, who desire software support, but typically cannot afford to implement a custom solution.

Greenhouse Gasses and Sustainability

It is conservatively estimated that over the next decade software for environmental information management, including sustainability, GHG (CO₂, N₂0, Methane, HFC, PFC, and SF6) data, environmental compliance, Health and Safety management and reporting will become a $2 billion market. Locus is the only player in the environmental data management arena to offer an environmental web portal, ePortal, and with its proven track record of success, Locus is better-positioned than any company to capitalize on this projected growth of the environmental information management software market. Locus Technologies’ ePortal provides the industry only SaaS platform that can aggregate many different environmental applications through a Single Sign On (SSO).

 

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Six Greenhouse Gases
Fact Sheet released by the U.S. Delegation to the 3rd Conference of the Parties, United Nations Committee on Climate Change
Kyoto, Japan, December 5, 1997

Six leading greenhouse gases are under discussion in the current negotiations. CO₂ is the most common of these gases. While others are not currently produced in large quantities as large as CO₂, their emissions have increased significantly in the last 10 years.

The U.S. proposal includes three gases that are excluded from the proposals of some other countries. HFCs, PFCs, and SF6 have very high “global warming potentials” because molecule for molecule they trap much more heat in the atmosphere than CO₂ and because they have extremely long atmospheric lifetimes. They are also important because of their relative contribution to causing the problem — especially the length of time these gases will stay in the atmosphere. Some of these chemicals are hundreds to thousands of times more effective at trapping heat and will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years (based on the data developed by the scientific experts for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

The relative importance of these three gases is expected to grow substantially by the year 2010, due primarily to the growth in these chemicals as they become substitutes for the CFCs being phased out under the Montreal Protocol. These gases together accounted for less than 2% of the total US emissions in 1990. Without actions to control greenhouse gas emissions, however, these three gases could become 6-10% of the total emissions by 2010.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂): CO₂ is produced naturally by living organisms and by the burning of fossil fuels. Carbon accounts for the largest share of US greenhouse gas emissions. In 1990, the CO₂ emissions were approximately 85% of the total, although the carbon sinks in forested lands offset CO2 emissions by about 8%. Worldwide carbon emissions have grown by about 27% since the industrial revolution.

Nitrous Oxide (N₂O): Naturally occurring, N₂O is produced by fuel burning and in fertilizer manufacturing. In 1990, N₂O accounted for about 2.5% of US emissions. Global Warming Potential (GWP): 310 times greater than CO₂.

Methane: Methane comes from coal formations and from landfills, livestock digestive processes, decomposing waste, and wetland rice cultivation. In 1990, methane accounted for almost 12% of the US total emissions. Global warming potential: About 21 times higher than that of CO₂.

Hydrofluorocarbon gases (HFC): These gases were developed largely as an alternative to ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) banned under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. HFCs do not damage the ozone layer, but they do contribute to global warming. They are used largely in refrigeration and as in semi-conductor manufacturing. Global warming potential: 140 to 11,700 times that of CO₂.

Perfluorocarbons (PFC): Result as a by-product aluminum smelting, and uranium enriching. Also are manufactured to replace CFCs in making semi-conductors. Global warming potential: 7,400 times CO₂.

Sulphur Hexafluoride (SF6): Largely used in heavy industry to insulate high-voltage equipment and to assist the manufacturing of cable cooling systems. Global warming potential: 23,900 times that of CO₂.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency, International Energy Agency, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.