Locus introduces environmental Electronic Data Deliverable (EDD) standards

A growing need exists for a standardized format for transmitting environmental electronic data. There are more than 15 different standards in use in the U.S. alone, most of which are antiquated. Locus leverages the latest XML technology to drive standard consolidation and ease of use.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 30 2007 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental data management software, announced today the release of a set of its first standard Electronic Data Deliverable (EDD) formats for the reporting of environmental laboratory analytical data. With the recent signings of several large Fortune 100 clients, and the upcoming tenfold increase in the number of sites with data in the company’s flagship product, EIM™, a growing need exists for a standardized format for transmitting electronic data. Several EDD formats already exist in the environmental industry—some promulgated by government agencies—and others by vendors of commercial software products. However, some of these format “standards” suffer from the requirement that data be submitted in multiple files, while other formats, have antiquated requirements related to field lengths or valid values that originated at a time when hard disk space was at a premium.

Locus’s Extensible Markup Language (XML) formatted single-file standard EDD allows for much more flexibility in file structure, because the data self-identifies each field using labels to bracket its contents. The content is similar and compliant with the (Staged Electronic Data Deliverable (SEDD) format. SEDD is an inter-agency effort spearheaded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to create a generic XML-based format for electronic delivery of analytical data for environmental industry.

To simplify the work of legacy systems, Locus is also releasing an EDD standard format, which consists of 53 explicitly defined fields maintained in a single file. Clients may request that additional custom fields be included to meet specific agency, the major state submission, or project requirements. The selection of the fields that are included in the Locus EIM EDD format was based on input from Locus’s user community and experts in analytical data management, as well as a review of the most popular currently used EDDs. The contents of the format permit data to be validated to EPA Level II, if a customer so desires. Locus envisions this format to be transitional for the companies and laboratories that are not yet ready to adopt XML-based technology, but are tired of dealing with multiple and antiquated file formats, which only serve to increase IT costs.

Since the release of EIM in 1999, Locus has allowed companies to design their own EDD formats, and Locus will continue to support this flexibility in its systems. However, Locus believes that the promulgation of a standardized format will allow laboratories to reduce the costs of creating EDDs, minimize errors in the reporting of data, and more quickly support new EIM clients.

“As the leader in environmental data management software, Locus strives to provide guidance, direction, and endorsement to the best ideas in an effort to standardize data management processes. Currently, there are more than 15 different standards for analytical data submittals, and this needs to change,” said Locus’s president and CEO, Neno Duplancic. “We believe that the standards we are releasing today, one transitional and one XML-based, will take steps toward achieving that goal and will help drive uniformity in the marketplace. With more than 35,000 sites reporting through LocusFocus EIM, Locus customers represent the largest users of environmental lab data, so this effort should help drive consolidation of the standards. Locus is committed to meeting all federal and state EDDs and leading the industry in reducing proliferation of incompatible formats by strongly endorsing XML-based SEDD standards,” added Duplancic.

Locus’s XML-based EDD accepts files in Stage 2a SEDD format, which contains the basic analytical results (including the sample ID, analyte, result, and qualifier) plus method quality control data. The EIM import module includes data verification and consistency checks outlined in the Document Type Definition (DTD) for Stage 2a, as well as forms for viewing the data in the imported SEDD file. Both formats can be downloaded for free from the Locus’s website at www.locustec.com.

Whitman Strategy Group and Locus Partner to help business, government optimize environmental information management using the Web

Greening of America Through On-Demand Software

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., and WASHINGTON, D.C., April 20, 2007 — The Whitman Strategy Group, a consulting firm that specializes in energy and environmental issues, and Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental data and information management services, announced today that the two companies are partnering to help businesses and government better manage environmental data and information using the Web.

By the year 2020, the environmental industry is expected to generate more data than the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Internal Revenue Service, and the financial and health industries combined. To make intelligent decisions about site cleanups, reductions in CO2, clean energy, and other factors affecting the quality and sustainability of life, businesses and government entities must have better tools to manage and interpret this information in real time. Robust information management systems are needed to store and analyze this data, yet, until recently, spending on such systems has been almost non-existent.

For example, the issue of global climate change is getting much more serious attention in our country. A major reason for the increased attention is that quantifiable data is available. One of the ongoing challenges is for companies to be able to adequately measure and track their greenhouse gas emissions. The ability to accurately collect and analyze information regarding the extent of an environmental problem and to estimate the costs associated with it are critical steps in environmental remediation and restoration.

With their combined environmental consulting services and information management expertise, The Whitman Strategy Group and Locus plan to help government agencies and businesses improve on the management and accessibility of this data through the use of Locus’s Web-based environmental information management systems.

“Advances in technology in recent years have made instant access to environmental data a reality. Coding this data by geography and making it available on the Web will help government and industry expose information they have been collecting for years and put it to beneficial use,” said Christine Todd Whitman, President of The Whitman Strategy Group and former EPA Administrator and Governor of New Jersey. “Locus can help businesses and government entities characterize their environmental problems faster and easier, so that valuable technical resources can be spent designing solutions, instead of searching for information.”

Environmental compliance currently ranks high on the list of corporate responsibilities. Companies that prove they are being environmentally responsible are increasingly attractive to investors, and they increase their global competitiveness. Yet, even the most sophisticated organizations acknowledge that assessing and quantifying environmental liabilities can be extremely challenging. “By improving consumer and business access to geocoded environmental data and overlaying it with other data sources, tremendous opportunities open up for greater understanding of and support for environmental issues,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus.

Many companies that have made a commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainability use Locus’s Environmental Management Information (EIM™) software and services to make better use of their technical resources. Locus is currently working with the U.S. Department of Energy and such companies as Alstom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Philips Electronics, and Raytheon to help them better manage their environmental data. Locus Technologies makes it easier for organizations to comply with local and international regulations and laws, while increasing productivity of their environmental staff and consultants, and significantly reducing IT costs. By keeping all information about sites in LocusFocus ePortal, a single, centralized, Web-based system, companies can aggregate information in real time, automate the flow of laboratory data, check the clean-up status of every site, monitor the financial performance of consultants and contractors, and obtain and comply with ISO 14001 requirements.

ABOUT WHITMAN STRATEGY GROUP
The Whitman Strategy Group (WSG) is a consulting firm that specializes in government relations and environmental and energy issues. The firm was founded by Christine Todd Whitman, former EPA Administrator and New Jersey governor. Governor Whitman is currently co-chair of the National Smart Growth Council and serves on the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and The Millennium Challenge Corp.,as well as several corporate boards.

For more information about The Whitman Strategy Group, visit www.whitmanstrategygroup.com.

Map software pinpoints environment hotspots

Services utilize convergence of tools like Google Earth, EPA data.

Read full article here.

Locus delivers U.S. EPA Superfund data through ePortal and Google Maps Mashup

Users can instantly see information on U.S. EPA Superfund sites

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 2, 2007 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental data and information management services, announced today that it has expanded its hugely popular Web-based LocusFocus ePortal Google™ Maps Mashup to include U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data. With Locus’s portal toolset and Google’s Map API (application program interface), users can now look for data in a rich map interface and gain instant access to data once hidden away in governmental data silos.

Using Locus’s Mashup, users can search by map location, zip code, or state and instantly see information on the U.S. EPA Superfund sites in their area. With the same ease as finding addresses or driving directions, anyone can now access U.S. EPA Superfund data previously only available in much more complex interfaces or not available at all.

“Advances in technology have made instant access to EPA Superfund data a reality,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus. “With an XML data stream provided by the EPA, Locus was able to quickly create a user-friendly map view into complex Superfund data. As the EPA releases more information, the application database can easily grow to display all types of environmental information, from regulatory permits on a site to other EPA program data such as the latest Toxics Release Inventory chemical information.”

“We are thrilled to see innovative technologies from private industry enabling the delivery of environmental data from government-managed data resources to the Web,” said Pat Garvey, a Geospatial Download Service Manager with the EPA. “It is gratifying to see the private sector take the initiative to deliver EPA data in an engaging and easy-to-use Web interface that allows citizens, as well as companies, to make use of the vast amounts of data the EPA has collected.”

The LocusFocus ePortal Google™ Maps Mashup can be viewed at www.locustec.com. In addition, Locus will be presenting the Mashup and other innovative technologies at the EPA-sponsored “Long-Term Stewardship Roundtable and Training” in San Diego, Calif., April 4-5, 2007.

Customers who already use Locus’s Environmental Information Management system can Mashup their own site data and access it through their existing interface. By zooming in on a site through Locus’s Google Map interface, customers can click on soil boring and groundwater monitoring well locations to retrieve analytical, geotechnical, geological, or any other data available for these or other locations.

“This advancement will help the EPA reach out to constituents and share information it has been collecting for years,” said Rick Bergquist, chief software evangelist for Locus. “It’s a win-win for all parties: citizens can easily access data they never had before, and the EPA can easily deliver data to the public at no cost to the government. This service is now possible because of Locus’s innovative On-Demand environmental information products.”

Locus’s environmental data Mashup is part of the company’s commitment to providing innovative, cost-effective environmental data management solutions to the environmental community and giving companies that want to become “green” the state-of-the-art tools they need to manage, show and document their progress.

Locus to support SoCal Edison with environmental screening of oil field production risks

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, October 25, 2006 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in specialty environmental services and web-based environmental information management has been selected to support Southern California Edison with property acquisition evaluations at various sites in Southern California.

As a part of the contract, Locus will provide investigation expertise and site characterization services for property development which includes screening for potential oil and gas field environmental and safety hazards, not uncommon to Southern California. This award adds an important client for Locus in rapidly expanding and fiercely competitive Southern California market.

“Locus is pleased to support Southern California Edison with our unique blend of environmental consulting and knowledge of investigation techniques for evaluating potential risks associated with former or operating petroleum production and exploration properties. This project is an example of the specialized consulting services Locus offers to our clientele,” said Mark Bittner, Regional Director for Locus Technologies.

“We are very pleased to add another energy client on the long list of energy companies that Locus has been serving since its inception. Our expertise for liability management associated with real estate transactions, coupled with the state-of-the art technology to manage environmental information over the web was, again, the winning combination that resulted in Southern California Edison choosing our company,” added Mr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus.

Locus Technologies chooses Tibco Software to improve customer experience in a real-time operating environment

TIBCO PortalBuilder Platform of Choice for Locus’s New Enterprise Portal Offering

PALO ALTO, Calif., 1 May 2006 — TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX), a leading business integration and process management software company that enables real-time business, today announced that Locus Technologies, the leader in on-demand environmental data management software and services, has selected TIBCO PortalBuilder® for the development and management of a new customer-facing portal offering.

Through its award-winning LocusFocus family of products and services, Locus Technologies provides a comprehensive suite of Web-based environmental information management applications to help companies meet the complex challenge of managing, sharing, and visualizing large sets of environmental information on demand. Using TIBCO PortalBuilder, the company plans to expand LocusFocus to include a new portal offering, to provide customers with a single point of access for viewing and analyzing large amounts of data consolidated in real-time from multiple environmental sites.

Using TIBCO PortalBuilder, the LocusFocus enterprise portal will include feature-rich user capabilities, including analytical data management and document control; storage and management; and Web-based remote sensing, control, and automation of treatment systems. By providing capabilities, such as visualization, document management, single sign-on and rolebased authorization in a unified platform, TIBCO will help Locus improve the overall customer experience, while simultaneously simplifying application and system management.

In addition, Locus will use TIBCO PortalBuilder to automate how their customers actually interact with, and perform environmental data management. The new enterprise portal will include features in which users can manage waste disposal, plan/schedule sampling events, generate reports, create maps of sites, and view other related documents, all within a consolidated, context-specific visual environment.

“Our goal is to lower our customers’ overall cost of remediation, while attaining the required cleanup objectives through the use of technology,” said Neno Duplancic, president and CEO, Locus Technologies. “TIBCO PortalBuilder was selected for its powerful ability to integrate systems, services, and processes in a way that’s also optimized for rapid deployment. In the past, our customers spent large amounts of consulting man hours searching for information.Now, they can spend that time analyzing and acting on their key environmental data—not looking for it—leading to faster and less expensive site closure, maintenance, and monitoring. We can now offer a single, unified system for managing environmental issues that’s easier for our customers to navigate and for us to manage.”

TIBCO PortalBuilder plays an integrated role in an enterprise service-oriented architecture by enabling easy assembly of composite applications that span multiple heterogeneous systems. Based on industry standards and utilizing intuitive configuration-based administration, TIBCO PortalBuilder enables organizations to rapidly develop and deploy portals without significant coding, ultimately reducing time, cost and risk.

“As more companies move to service-oriented architectures (SOA), the enterprise portal is becoming the face of the business,” said Ram Menon, senior vice president, Marketing and Strategy, TIBCO. “Companies that don’t ensure a consistent and positive user experience across applications will suffer the consequences of customer dissatisfaction. This is particularly true for the emerging environmental industry that is already data-intensive and will become even more so by introducing large volumes of data and analytics as it moves toward real- time monitoring and performing analytics in a geographic area across multiple customers. TIBCO PortalBuilder will help Locus to differentiate itself as one of the most customer-focused, innovative vendors in this emerging market.”

 

ABOUT TIBCO
TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ:TIBX) is a leading business integration and process management software company that enables real-time business. Real-time business is about helping companies become more cost-effective, more agile and more efficient. TIBCO has delivered the value of real-time business, what TIBCO calls The Power of Now®, to over 2,500 customers around the world and in a wide variety of industries. For more information on TIBCO’s proven enterprise backbone, business integration, business process management, and business optimization solutions, TIBCO can be reached at +1 650-846-1000 or on the Web at www.tibco.com. TIBCO is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA.

TIBCO, the TIBCO logo, The Power of Now , TIBCO Software and TIBCO PortalBuilder are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only.

Locus Technologies Brings Google Maps to the Environment

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 28 November 2005  — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in environmental information management, today announced that it has expanded its award winning, web-based Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™) system to work with the popular Google™ Maps. Locus embedded Google Maps API to its popular EIM application for manage analytical data on the Internet. A user can now add overlays of environmental information to the map and display shadowed “info windows,” just like Google Maps. The result is a Google Map Mashup, a web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.

With the same ease of finding an address location or driving directions, users can now find subsurface environmental information at their sites, such as chemical concentrations in groundwater. Users can zoom and pan the maps and photos for a seamless view of the geography around sites. Using this Mashup, EIM provides a data box listing the chemical concentration in groundwater, borehole information, and other relevant environmental information associated with location. With Google Maps in EIM, users have the power of a Geographical Information System in a light-weight web browser application.

The EIM interface to Google Maps significantly improves productivity in managing spatial environmental information by developing and delivering the next generation of Internet mapping application services to the environmental industry. The result is the almost instant transformation of previously inaccessible raw environmental data into meaningful, actionable, and productive visual information.

“Drawing upon input from hundreds of our clients who currently use EIM’s SVG-based GIS application, Google Maps provides EIM users with additional convenience, efficiency, and a distinct competitive advantage. The product is ideally suited for large or small sites that require a GIS application, but don’t have resources to build one using an expensive traditional GIS tool. Furthermore, all of this exciting new functionality comes without the need to store large image files on the server end, thus minimizing the number of trips between browser and server, minimizing storage and Internet traffic requirements,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus.

This application is offered as a value-added service to existing users of Locus’ eGIS-SVG module.

Locus expands Environmental Information Management (EIM) system with ability to export data directly into Arcview 8 GIS from ESRI

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 11 November 2003 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in environmental information management, today announced that it has expanded its award winning, web-based Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™) system, a part of their LocusFocusSM web portal, to include the capability of exporting data directly to the ArcView 8 Geographical Information System (GIS) from Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). Based in Redlands California, ESRI is the industry leader in geospatial applications and technology. ArcView 8 GIS is rapidly becoming the standard for geographical analysis and is based on the highly successfully ArcView 3.x program, which has sold more than a million copies.

An EIM™ user now can connect to EIM™ by using a Locus toolbar in the ArcView 8 interface. The toolbar, built on Web Services and Microsoft’s .NET technology, lets the user query EIM™ for analytical, groundwater or field-reading data. Query results are automatically added to the ArcView 8 map as an ESRI shapefile. The new ArcView link to EIM™ reflects Locus’s commitment to building an enterprise system that allows national or multi-national companies to meet their diverse data management needs and reporting requirements across the U.S. and around the world. Other recent enhancements to the system give companies even more flexibility in exporting their data to a variety of formats, including Microsoft Excel and AutoCAD .dxf files, while still allowing all the company’s data to reside in a single repository.

“ArcView is the world’s most popular desktop GIS and mapping software, with more than 500,000 copies in use worldwide. It was critical that EIM™ support users who employ ArcView for their spatial analysis needs. The new Locus toolbar for ArcView 8 lets users seamlessly query their EIM™ data and put the results on a site map. Users who have invested time and money in ArcView 8 customizations and programming do not have to abandon that commitment to take advantage of EIM™’s rich suite of environmental management tools. By leveraging Microsoft’s .NET technology and XML as the underlying structure for the ArcView link, Locus remains on the leading edge of web-enabled environmental software integration.” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus.

LocusFocus(SM) is a multi-channel, dynamic Web portal that provides for all aspects of environmental site management. LocusFocus(SM) has the potential of bringing the benefits of Internet technology to the environmental industry and, as such, eliminate the many inefficiencies and incompatible technologies that afflict the industry.

Locus Technologies Implements Environmental Industry’s First Scalable Vector Graphics-Based Geographic Information System

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 1 December 2001 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental information management, today announced it has released the first version of a web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) for its award-wining LocusFocus suite of Internet technologies. The system allows users to see a map of a site, click on a well on the map, and obtain chemical and water level information for that well, including a log, if one exists. Data can be displayed in tables or graphs, posted on the map, or downloaded. Such capabilities and features represent only a starting point. Locus also intends to expand capabilities into contouring, animation, and 3D visualization. What is exciting about this new development is that it is entirely based on a new Web graphics format and XML-based language called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

SVG offers many benefits. Foremost among these is that it is not a proprietary technology. Rather, it has been developed as an open, vendor-neutral specification by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Companies who have contributed to the specification include Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Autodesk, Apple, AOL, Sun, Adobe Systems, and Macromedia. SVG is compatible with other Web technologies like HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Javascript, Document Object Model (DOM), and Java. As such, rich user interfaces and dynamically-generated, data-driven graphics can be easily developed. Because SVG is a vector format, images download faster, and users can zoom in on a section of a map or graphic without any loss of resolution and without having to reload the image. This is of particular importance for the environmental industry that deals with large amounts of information. Lastly, because it is entirely text-based, users can search for text (such as a well ID or a contaminant name) within the SVG image itself.

Traditional GISs, especially web-based versions, are expensive to purchase and difficult to implement. Most require extensive, time-consuming custom development. Personnel with the necessary experience and expertise are in scarce supply, in contrast to the number of programmers familiar with HTML, Javascript, and other common Web-based tools and languages. Those organizations that require sophisticated, enterprise-wide GIS functionality can justify the cost and complexity of implementing a GIS Internet Map Server (IMS). Most, however, cannot. Moreover, the vast majority of interactive Internet maps for the environmental industry don’t need to offer anything close to this level of functionality.

“The complexity and cost of traditional GIS software is amazing—even after all these years,” says Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus. “In contrast, interactive, map-based systems using SVG can be developed in a fraction of the time and, as a result, for less money. SVG will form the foundation for all the graphics and GIS work that Locus will be undertaking in the near future. Most other consulting companies are either stuck with outdated approaches or have no GIS capabilities at all. We hope to seize this opportunity and make Locus an industry leader in applying this new and exciting web-based technology to the graphical display of environmental information.”

LocusFocus is a multi-channel, dynamic Web portal that provides for all aspects of environmental site management. LocusFocus has the potential to bring the benefits of Internet technology to the environmental industry and, as such, eliminate the many inefficiencies and incompatible technologies that afflict the industry.