Enablon, IHS and SAP have emerged as key application providers for forward-thinking businesses looking beyond compliance for ways energy and resource conservation can make them more competitive.
Air Quality, Cloud / SaaS, Drinking Water Quality, EHS Compliance, Environmental Information Management, Sustainability, Transportation, Waste Management, Wastewater
Locus’ CEO to present Cloud Solution for Environmental Information Management for Railroad Industry at the Railroad Environmental Conference at University of Urbana-Champaign.
Environmental, Energy, Emissions, and Compliance Management in the Cloud presented by Locus’ CEO, Neno Duplan.
RailTec, University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign
Abstract of Original 2012 Presentation Follows:
As they go about the lengthy, tedious, expensive and very often dirty job of decontaminating polluted industrial sites, environmental consultants bill their clients by the hour, capturing…and then completely controlling…the superabundance of project-related environmental data that underlies remediation strategies. As a result of this process, a “consultant-centric model” has dominated the field of corporate environmental data management. This is primarily because environmental data is not integral to the daily functioning of a company, and because the quantities and complexities of the data produced are enormous. So company managers are generally quite comfortable with letting their consultants do all the querying, analysis, reporting…and then storing the data.
And since the consultants derive increased billing hours from controlling their clients’ data, the ultimate incentive for them is a renewed or extended contract, an outcome which, though certainly not guaranteed, is optimized by their control of the data.
But change is coming. The environmental data management practices of corporations and their consultants are undergoing a profound transformation as new Web-based software provides a low-cost means of making available the critical information that organizational decision makers need not only to better understand and manage their overall environmental liabilities but also to improve their operations by analyzing the valuable data. While environmental data is collected primarily for compliance reporting, when mined with the right tools it can also be used to point to weaknesses in data gathering and processing operations and provide valuable information on how to eliminate or reduce these.
A new “company-centric” environmental data management model now offers a remote data repository situated in the Internet “Cloud” and equally accessible in real time to all, including both the client and its consultants.
Cloud computing is a software outsourcing model that offers great promise for managing environmental, energy, emissions, and compliance information of any type. It is slowly making its way into companies that have to manage large quantities of data and meet routine compliance requirements. The model fits the way environmental information needs to be managed through mashups (applications that integrate data or functionality from multiple sources or technologies), and has the potential to completely upend the way railroad industry organize, manage, and report their environmental and energy data and information. Companies that have large portfolios of sites and facilities can use Cloud computing as a very low-cost means to take control of their mission-critical environmental data and information, gain new functionality and capabilities, and at the same time circumvent the involvement of their IT department if they so desire.
Cloud-based data management can completely replace existing stand-alone data systems and reporting tools to provide a comprehensive integrated solution to the railroad industry’s one of the most vexing problems—the centralization and management of complex data pertaining to contaminated water, groundwater, soil, and air.
At many contaminated transportation sites or at facilities and other sites contaminated with hydrocarbons, Cloud-based information management systems already provide market-tested solutions that were rapidly deployed and provide a high level of functionality and data security, an extensive set of QA/QC standards, and scalability.
The Cloud provides a platform for the complete electronic processing of analytical data, emissions data, compliance activities, and sustainability data beginning with the upload of electronic data deliverables from labs, and terminating in state-mandated or federal regulatory exports and reporting. When companies use such Software as a Service (SaaS) models, they eliminate most of the difficulties associated with the management of complex data sets while offering the opportunity for more rapid customization of data reporting to meet the changing needs of the industry.
The most significant discussions focused on the recent Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) guidance to combine Underground Piping and Tank Integrity efforts with the Groundwater Protection program as a whole.
EPRI is happy to announce the third annual coordination of the EPRI Groundwater Protection Workshop with the NEI Radioactive Effluent Technical Specifications/Radiological Environmental Monitoring Programs(RETS/REMP) Workshop.
There is little dispute in both scientific and business communities that groundwater protection and water usage in general at hydrofracking sites provide the biggest challenges for this young and promising industry.
GRA is pleased to announce its symposium on compounds of emerging concern in groundwater.
EBJ is the leading source of business intelligence in the environmental industry. EBJ provides a strategic overview and an independent perspective on market trends and business strategy in a monthly publication.
Locus offers another industry-first application for environmental data collection
SAN FRANCISCO, California, March 28, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based energy, environmental, and emissions information management software, announced today a new iPhone application for field data collection. eWell for the iPhone consists of two linked components: the iPhone application itself, and Locus’ Environmental Information ManagementTM (EIM) web-based application. Data are collected using the iPhone and the data provisioning setup is performed in EIM. Once data are collected, they are wirelessly transmitted to EIM for review and reporting.
Using EIM, eWell users can map the routes for checking a series of wells that need to be sampled, and/or those that they need water levels and other field parameters measured. They can download these routes to the iPhone, along with selected historical environmental data on their wells, for use in the field for real-time validation and QA/QC of collected data. Once downloaded to eWell, the routes and well locations can be seen and accessed directly from the iPhone’s Google Maps interface.
Once in the field, customers can use their iPhones, iPod Touches, or iPads to record water levels, pH, turbidity, and other environmental readings, as well as to compare current and past readings. Where Wi-Fi or 3G coverage is available, data collected in the field uploads instantly to EIM. Where access is unavailable, users save the collected data automatically, which can then be uploaded when coverage becomes available. eWell for the iPhone completely streamlines the data upload and download processes, eliminating any steps that require equipment synchronization.
“The release of this new iPhone/iPod/iPad version of eWell adds yet another powerful tool to Locus’ arsenal of web-based technologies for lowering the cost of environmental data collection and management. For information that cannot be collected through interfaces to other applications, such as from analytical laboratories LIMS systems, data historians or wireless sensors, eWell offers a powerful alternative that eliminates duplicate input, reduces transcription time, performs data checks and validation at point of collection, and maintains a complete audit trail, including the georefererence on who did what, when, and where,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO Locus Technologies.
Once in EIM’s data review tables, users can review uploaded data for accuracy and completeness. After completing all data validation checks, field readings are moved to liveEIM for reporting and other project uses. EIM is part of Locus’ ePortal SaaS platform.
“The smart phone-based eWell represents another milestone for applying mobile Web 2.0 technologies to the business world. Locus will continue expanding this popular platform to include field data collection for energy, carbon, resource consumption, and other sustainability information. As is the case for all other applications that Locus has pioneered over last decade, eWell is designed to lower a company’s environmental expenditures while improving data quality,” added Duplan.
Locus first released eWell in 2000 on the PalmTM, and was the environmental industry’s first wireless Internet application for recording and transmitting environmental data in the field.
The eWell iPhone app is available for download from the Apple, Inc. App Store immediately for $19.95. Over the course of 2011, Locus will introduce eWell on other smart phone platforms, including Android.
Organizing Enterprise Sustainability and Water Information in the Cloud
Locus Expands ePortal to Address a Growing Need for Environmental Enterprise Resource Planning (EERP)
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 6 December 2010 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental compliance and information management software, announced today new and expanded features and functionalities of ePortal, its award winning software platform for environmental and energy information management. This fifth generation version of the platform introduces a new Rich Internet Application (RIA)-based user interface that provides enhanced usability, improved work flows, and Augmented Reality (AR).
ePortal now provides customers with a single integrated portal platform to capture, organize, visualize, and report all key facility environmental information in a central, enterprise database offered in the cloud. The platform enables simplified work flows and advanced visualization that includes AR to create individualized views of information across media and resources. With the use of the ePortal software clients can manage all aspects of their regulatory compliance, energy and water usage, water quality, air emissions, GHG reporting, health and safety and much more. In short, ePortal provides the most advanced approach to the complex EERP challenges that face many companies today.
Locus’ ePortal is built around the familiar Conceptual Site Model (CSM). By design, CSM is multidisciplinary and encompasses both legacy and ongoing information about a site or facility. It can be viewed as a cube drawn around a site, part of which is underground and part above ground. All relevant inputs to and outputs from the cube are monitored and recorded. On the input side, utilities such as electricity, gas, and water, and raw materials are tracked. Outputs include air, water, and soil discharges and waste. Equipment within the cube such as boilers, stacks, tanks, and so forth become assets that have various attributes that must be recorded, stored, and often reported on.
For companies that adopt ePortal, it becomes the enterprise Business Intelligence (BI) dashboard for managing the many aspects of the sustainable enterprise. It synthesizes and crystallizes what is already known about a site or facility and augments that information with ongoing monitoring and reporting. Companies are able to report and forecast the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in real time across multiple hierarchical views. ePortal brings Augmented Reality to CSM.
Using Locus’ CSM-based approach, clients can take a more holistic view of their enterprise, enabling them to reduce both their compliance expenditures and their operational costs. In particular, ePortal provides enterprise tools to reduce and optimize consumption of various resources to lower GHG emissions and encourage more sustainable growth. Simplification of facility management based on a CSM approach recognizes that businesses need a flexible, easy to understand, multi-media solution in today’s multi-regulatory world. Locus’ CSM-based environmental portal provides the tools to quantify environmental liabilities, manage sustainability and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, report water footprint, organize compliance and Health and Safety (H&S) records, accurately report to regulators, and run what-if analysis to facilitate forecasting.
“The increased sophistication of the corporate customer, combined with the recent challenging economic climate has fueled the need for easy to use integrated solutions that allow fewer people to manage more using less. That was the driving force behind ePortal’s recent update, which provides a single software solution, across the various regulated media. Historically, many companies have built silo applications that deal with one or a few reporting requirements and associated data management needs. In fact, some companies have been building software solutions in this space for over a decade. But what has been lacking in the market space is an integrated solution that brings many if not all environmental, energy, water and other compliance and consumption requirements under a single portal infrastructure and Single Sign On (SSO) on the web. What industry wants and needs is an integrated system similar to ERP that would manage all their environmental, energy, water, and other sustainability needs. That is exactly what we have built and are happy to offer it to our clients,” said Dr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.
Locus Technologies
299 Fairchild Drive
Mountain View, CA 94043
P: +1 (650) 960-1640
F: +1 (415) 360-5889
Locus Technologies provides cloud-based environmental software and mobile solutions for EHS, sustainability management, GHG reporting, water quality management, risk management, and analytical, geologic, and ecologic environmental data management.