Geotechnologies have come a long way toward enabling the better stewardship of our planet, but there’s considerably more that can be done. The public profile of sustainability issues is creating political will for better monitoring and management of resources and our environment. How geotechnology companies respond to these growing green opportunities will largely shape the future of the technology as a whole.
There will be an increasing number of projects where geotechnology companies can make an impact while growing their bottom line. The problems related to sustainability require fieldwork, analysis and ongoing monitoring at regional scales. This requirement will present challenges to develop new data collection technologies, rigorous analysis methodologies and presentation tools.
To date, geotechnology is a useful tool to quantify global change, but it requires multi-disciplinary inputs and more concerted application in wider areas in order to truly live up to its promise.
Monitoring Global Change
The global challenges that we face provide opportunities to monitor and analyze broad-scale change over time. Remote sensing is an extremely valuable component to analyze and assess such changes. The current space-based platforms are hardly adequate to provide global coverage, even though there’s an accelerating number of earth observation satellites being deployed by a growing number of countries.
There will be an increasing need for more platforms and better sensors. The data will have to be pulled together more quickly and efficiently, with more and faster automation tools that deliver information in addition to visual proof. Machine analysis will become of greater importance as the data loads that these sensors delivers is set to grow exponentially.
The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is an impressive effort to deploy worldwide sensors and monitoring tools that interact and form a seamless network across our globe. The international funding and cross-border collaboration is commendable, and many innovations will come from this effort. The fact that GEOSS has been made an international priority means that a great deal of information will come online regarding the current health of our oceans, waterways, landcover and atmosphere. New tools will be needed to make sense of this data, and sophisticated models will need to be developed to better predict our path.
Emphasis on Efficiency
What motivates business goes well beyond what’s best for our planet. The crucial element for widescale adoption of green practices is to illustrate efficiency gains and cost savings for a better bottom line. Issues such as peak oil and carbon taxing will push businesses into this mode of thinking sooner rather than later. Geospatial tools have a great deal to offer to streamline businesses and ease fuel costs through better route planning and logistics.
The emphasis on efficiency for business requires a number of enterprise-level tools at varying levels of operation, from in-vehicle devices, to management tools, to executive dashboards. The platforms and interoperability are in place to deliver such technologies today, and business opportunities will increase the availability of off-the-shelf solutions that can easily be deployed and integrated. What’s required for the short term is helping businesses understand the value of squeezing out efficiencies, saving money while cutting carbon footprints.
Holistic Approaches
Perhaps the greatest area of impact to decrease humankind’s effects on the planet is in our built environment. Our cities are places where we can make profound changes in how efficiently we live, and in how much carbon goes into the atmosphere. Geospatial technologies have a great deal to offer for broad regional planning and monitoring, but there’s very little integration of geospatial technologies with building-level inputs and the disciplines that deal with design and construction.
The ability to create intelligent city models, where Earth processes are modeled and monitored for our inputs into these complex systems, will greatly enhance understanding of our planet. With greater understanding of our impacts, we can counter the effects and help strike a balance for greater longevity of a livable environment.
When it comes to stewardship of our planet, geotechnology has many roles to play and quite a bit of room for advancement. Our Earth is a resilient place, but there are many pressing issues that need to be addressed rapidly and diligently if humanity is to have a long run on this planet.
Read what Jeff Thurston has to say on this subject here.
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