Locus Technologies Forms Alliance with UNC Asheville’s NEMAC to Advance Cloud Software Solutions in the Areas of Weather, Climate Change Data, GIS, and Visualization Technologies
SAN FRANCISCO, California, 21 February 2012 — Locus Technologies (Locus), an industry leader in web-based environmental, energy, and compliance software, and UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), an applied environmental research center that creates tools to address the challenges and opportunities of human interaction with the environment, announced a broad alliance today.
Locus and NEMAC signed a letter of cooperation to establish a working relationship that will leverage both organizations’ resources in applied research, web development activities, cloud computing, and science delivery collaborations. The joint research activities will focus on the areas of weather and climate data, geographic information systems (GIS), visualization technologies, augmented reality, subsurface and environmental monitoring and modeling, software programming, and cloud hosting environments. Additionally, Locus agrees to support undergraduate student internship opportunities during students’ tenure at UNC Asheville, as well as post-graduation.
Locus’ software provides effective, ongoing management of environmental and energy information to organizations. NEMAC has been focused on research of similar environmental issues, but on a larger scale. NEMAC has been a leader in bringing together academic, government, and public sectors through collaboration, and in using science communication and delivery to develop decision-making tools for local and regional planners, decision makers, and the public.
“We see tremendous potential for process improvements for both Locus’ enterprise customers and NEMAC’s government partners by combining resources and integrating results of climate change and other large-scale monitoring into Locus’ enterprise-centered applications. Integration of the information on weather and climate change monitoring will enable organizations to easily analyze, optimize, and mitigate their energy and emissions,” said Jim Fox, Director of NEMAC.
“Our clients can leverage NEMAC’s strategic climate and weather expertise and Locus’ enterprise information management platform to more effectively align goals, strategy, and the successful execution of emission reduction and energy conservation measures,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus Technologies. “Working closely with NEMAC, Locus will offer robust, scalable, secure solutions that provide large commercial, industrial, and utility businesses, as well as government entities, the ability to better manage environmental information, energy, and emissions, and, ultimately, perform forecasting of future energy, water, or resource consumption based on weather pattern changes and forecasts.”
“At Locus, we pride ourselves on bringing the right people, technology, and systems together to deliver the innovative, integrated software and services our customers require. During the evaluation of NEMAC research projects, it became readily apparent that there was a compelling opportunity to improve our customers’ experience through a collaboration with a national leader in environmental information research,” said Dr. Todd Pierce, Locus’ director for GIS services, who will be responsible for managing the relationship between the two organizations. “Through our alliance with NEMAC, we hope to integrate and expand the Locus ePortal platform with visualizations and tools developed by NEMAC to deliver joint solutions to the public and private sector,” added Pierce.
ABOUT NEMAC
UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC) specializes in science communication and the development of decision support tools for local and regional planners, decision makers, and the public. NEMAC’s goal is to help people understanding the relevance and importance of complex issues such as climate and weather, forest health, natural hazards, land use planning, and the wise use of our energy and water resources. Our tools, developed with the assistance of UNC Asheville undergraduate research students, include web applications, interactive geographic information system (GIS) applications, multimedia delivery technologies, and print media. These collaborative projects provide meaning to scientific data. NEMAC and its many partnerships bring students, scientific professionals, and local decision makers together to help solve problems facing society.
For more information, visit www.nemac.unca.edu or email nemac@unca.edu.
