OSHA has released their most cited violations of the 2019 fiscal year, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the same mistakes are being made year after year. They are:
Fall Protection – General Requirements (1926.501)
Hazard Communication (1910.1200)
Scaffolding – General Requirements (1926.451)
Control of Hazardous Energy – Lockout/Tagout (1910.147)
Respiratory Protection (1910.134)
Ladders (1926.1053)
Powered Industrial Trucks (1910.178)
Fall Protection – Training Requirements (1926.503)
Machine Guarding– General Requirement (1910.212)
Personal Protective and Lifesaving Equipment – Eye and Face Protection (1926.102)
With over 30,000 cumulative violations for the top ten alone, and the same mistakes being cited repeatedly, there is an obvious need for an EHS software solution that provides a number of tools to prevent these missteps from being made. From configurable smart notifications to follow-up assignments when accidents, near misses, or when other incidents are logged, Locus EHS&S compliance software offers assurance that your safety procedures can be followed promptly and correctly.
Two additional types of task periodicity have been added: Triggered tasks, which allow the automatic creation of a Task based on the creation of a triggering event (e.g., a spill or storm event), and Sequenced tasks, which allow the creation of a series of tasks in a designated order. Learn more about our compliance and task management here.[/sc_icon_with_text]
Users can now create a mobile version of any data input form. Every form in the desktop platform can be mobile-enabled, so you can introduce new ways of streamlining data collection to your team.[/sc_icon_with_text]
Our expanded Facilities Management App is designed to map at the enterprise level showing all locations, navigate your facilities hierarchy to review information and quickly take action at every level. Locus Facilities is a comprehensive facility management application that aims to increase the efficiency of customer operations and centralize important company information.[/sc_icon_with_text]
Users can choose from existing portlets (found on the dashboard pages) to customize their landing page to their unique needs. Create custom dashboards to highlight exactly the information you want in any format (charts, maps, tables, tree maps, diagrams, and more).[/sc_icon_with_text]
Add notes to any record by sending an email directly into the system. Allows anyone to add or append to a record in the system simply through email.[/sc_icon_with_text]
Contact us to see a demo of Locus Platform
https://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/locus_screenshot_ehs-software-lp-applications.png11541064Locus Product Teamhttps://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/locus_logo_2x.pngLocus Product Team2019-12-30 05:29:232020-01-06 06:23:50Top Enhancements to Locus EHS Compliance Software in 2019
Last week Locus attended the first training session offered by California Air Resources Board (CARB) for verifiers under the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program. The California LCFS program has been ramping up over the past several years, and is now ready to start certifying third-party verifiers to review both applications and routine reporting.
The LCFS program is part of California’s initiative to meet the AB32 requirements of reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and 40% lower than that level by 2030. LCFS is specifically intended to address emissions from transportation fuels in California, which are approximately half of the overall emissions statewide. Like the Greenhouse Gas Mandatory Reporting Rule and Cap-and-Trade programs that preceded it, the California LCFS program uses a market-based approach to incentivize innovation and new approaches to reduce emissions.
Seth Lalonde, Locus Environmental Scientist, at the California Air Resources Board Training
The program covers a wide variety of projects, including production of alternative fuels (e.g. renewable diesel and biogenic compressed natural gas), innovative approaches to fossil fuel production and refining, and direct carbon capture and sequestration. Fuels are assigned a carbon intensity based on overall carbon dioxide emissions over the entire life cycle, from production to processing to shipping to consumption. The carbon intensity is essentially a measure of the emissions from the fuel per unit of energy. The lower the carbon intensity value, the less impact the fuel has in terms of carbon emissions. Certain fuels can even have a negative carbon intensity, which essentially means the fuel production process is absorbing more carbon than is eventually emitted to the atmosphere (such is the case for compressed or liquefied natural gas produced using biomethane from manure collection). The program also has impacts well outside the California border. After all, fuel that is eventually used in California can originate anywhere in the world, and the LCFS program allows for these projects to obtain credits regardless of their location.
Unsurprisingly, California was the first state to adopt and implement a LCFS program, and the first to establish a third-party verification program specific for LCFS. Although it was clearly the first presentation of this training material, staff from CARB as well as the Climate Action Reserve and The Climate Registry were on hand to assist in addressing questions and topics that weren’t covered in the prepared materials. And considering the wide variety of LCFS project types and the disparate backgrounds of attendees for the verification training, they did a great job of getting everyone all the information they needed to understand and verify these projects.
For those participating in the LCFS program or considering projects under the program, there are a few key things to keep in mind.
First and foremost, like any market-based emission program that includes a verification or auditing requirement, transparency is critical. The verifiers are trained to dig deep into your data, and not to take ‘no’ for an answer. Be prepared to have your metadata and documentation assembled and easily made available to the verifier. (For more on Transparency in Reporting, view this webinar)
Second, the LCFS program includes requirements for continuous or near-continuous monitoring for many parameters, and instrumentation capable of electronic data archival. Manual data records and transcription are still acceptable under other carbon offset programs, but under LCFS these options are no longer allowed. Be sure that your instrumentation is consistent with the specific LCFS requirements, or you’ll be seeing a non-conformance from your verifier.
There were many other tips and common pitfalls highlighted during the training for specific LCFS project types. Overall, I’m very excited to see how the LCFS program evolves in California, and how the energy industry takes advantage of these incentives to provide new options for transportation fuels that will reduce carbon emissions.
Update: Locus is now an approved verification body for the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Learn more here.
Sustainability is a corporate necessity, and finding the right software to support company-wide sustainability goals and initiatives is imperative to streamlining this time-consuming activity. This is especially true if you are managing inputs from many facilities/locations or have required or optional reporting requirements. Not to mention, most corporate annual reports demand a summary of key sustainability initiatives as part of the corporate annual reporting process.
Here are some features to look for when selecting a sustainability software—to make sure your new software will actually help your company track and report its sustainability initiatives more accurately and efficiently.
1. Make sure software is accessible to everyone who needs to input data
It is very important that data owners/data collectors throughout your facilities can directly enter their own relevant Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and greenhouse gas data—no more searching for data from disparate company groups, or searching through email for spreadsheets or invoices, and no more tracking down the field technician for the field log, or hunting for other assorted documentation.
This is especially important when dealing with company locations in various geographic regions. A well-designed software system can solve this most vexing problem: finding the relevant data.
Check for the following features in any sustainability software you’re considering:
Data stored in one managed location
All sustainability data should be stored in one place—whether text or numeric, and whether from an automatic data acquisition system, external database, hand-written field logs, or third-party documentation (e.g., air permits).
Streamlined reporting from centralized data
Reporting is streamlined because all input is consolidated in one managed location.
Standardized terminology and units
A centralized system enforces common terminology, units, and values (numbers vs. text) that are so important for final reporting. No one wants to get energy data from 10 different sources, all in different units, formats, and terminologies.
Built-in notifications and workflows
Also, look for built-in reminders, notifications, and escalations to ensure the inputs are completed in a timely manner, and if deadlines are missed, you know exactly what is missing and who to contact.
Data can come from multiple sources, and your sustainability software should be able to handle them all—then consolidate this data into a single source of truth.
2. Make sure the software application includes quality assurance and third-party review tools
Any decent software can make data collection easy, but to truly improve your company’s sustainability initiatives, it must also have tools for quality assurance reviewers and third-party verifiers to easily review the information, track the reported values to source data, and understand how the data were processed. Ultimately, the software also needs to allow the reporter to easily make updates or corrections as needed. Because these data are reported to regulators or shareholders, accuracy is paramount.
Look for the following features to support transparency and auditing:
Visible and accessible calculations
All embedded rules, queries, and calculations should be visible and traceable to anyone reviewing so they can check the calculations and raise a flag if issues are found.
Your sustainability software should make it easy to see and understand the formulas that produced any calculated data values.
Accessible and auditable source data and final values
All source data and final reported values should be visible, traceable, and tracked. Watch out for “black box” calculations that will confound auditors and cost you in labor hours while you are determining how the reported value was obtained, what the data inputs were, and where the source data originated.
Complete audit trails
Ensure audit trails are present for any changes in key data. You should be able to find out exactly who entered a value or who changed it. Be sure the software is keeping track and that everything is recorded and traceable to ensure the integrity of the process and reports. Good software will have an audit tool that tracks who did what, who is responsible for which datasets, and who changed which values and how.
3. Make sure the software includes tools for reporting to multiple regulatory or voluntary bodies
Many companies report to various regulatory or voluntary bodies, and the software you select should support all the major reporting requirements to avoid the need for separate calculations for some jurisdictions.
Enter once, report 10x
Look for the concept of “enter once, report many times” when reviewing software applications. The gold standard is the capability for reporting methodologies and calculations configured for reporting to multiple agencies from a single dataset, all in a single tool.
Check support for your actual, specific needs
Review your reporting requirements to see if the software handles them. Key reporting requirements include state or federal regulations, internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) and other sustainability reporting, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and The Climate Registry (TCR).
Consider export formats
Ensure the software includes exports to XML, which is a common format for EPA and ARB reporting, and an option for reporting to other agencies. Having such outputs easily generated from the software will save time and money during the reporting season.
Find out what formats you need for regulatory reporting, and make sure your software supports exporting in these formats.
4. Look for data verification flags so you don’t spend time fixing obviously bad data
If you normally report 500 metric tons of GHG per year and you are finding entries of 500,000 metric tons per year in your data, chances are, it’s just simple data entry errors. However, no one wants to track these down months after the data entry event. Look for software that will flag these anomalies on entry and force the user to fix them before you ever get to the data review step.
Ability to set validation rules
Look for software that allows you to set rules to flag data entries that fall outside of expected thresholds, catching errors before they make it to QA personnel or auditors.
Options to specify acceptable ranges and add comments for unusual values Look for features that will help you avoid last-minute questions about the validity of your data. Look for the ability to specify an outlier range to flag values so that you can address them immediately before the report is due. Allow for the opportunity to enter a comment right alongside the flagged value, providing a record that the value was double-checked and is correct for a specified reason.
Immediate, inline alerts about outlier data values help prevent last-minute surprises.
5. Look for user-defined workflows to help you and your users step through sustainability reporting and tracking process
The sustainability software you select should help simplify data entry and reporting by supporting your preferred workflows. Software with configurable workflows can be a huge help for both data entry personnel and managers reviewing data, by making the status of all data entry and reporting business processes abundantly clear.
Options for lockdown after manager review
Look for the ability to include manager overrides to data entry and workflows that will lock the data entries to editing once reviewed. This will help ensure others are not modifying data while you are in the report preparation process.
Options for managers to lock down data are important for preventing edits to data that is being prepared for reporting.
Quickly identify current workflow status
Check for easy visual indicators of workflow status to ensure the process is on track to be completed by the reporting deadline.
There should be an easy way to see the current workflow status of any data in your system.
Easily modify workflow along the way
Also look for the ability to easily modify the workflow if your original configuration was not optimal. Not everyone knows the best workflow for new software when they initially start using it. The ability to modify the workflows—without needing a software developer—is an important feature to consider when choosing a sustainability software solution.
6. Look for robust audit trails to help solve “whodunit” issues
All software that handles critical or regulatory data should provide auditing on key data fields. Find out the details of what is audited and how you will be able to access the audit information.
Full history of all changes
Software should retain a history of values with every report change.
Who, when, what
Look for a complete audit trail of who did what, and what was changed, and when. Tracking any modifications to values supports a rigorous audit and is sure to make your QC staff really happy.
Your software should be automatically recording a history of all changes at each step of your workflow.
7. Look at out-of-the-box data outputs—but also consider how easy (or hard) it will be to create specific reports for your corporate needs
Every software has built-in report and dashboards, but they may not meet all your needs out-of-the-box. Assume some reports will need to be configured, and review the software accordingly.
Tracking specific KPIs
Does the software provide an easy way to track year-to-year KPIs for internal evaluation or for preparation of public-facing sustainability reports?
Consider future reporting and visualization needs
If you need a new report, chart, or other visualization of your data, will this request incur a custom software development charge, or is it an easy configuration?
Adapt dashboards to your needs
Can you easily customize the software’s default dashboards?
Look for options to easily configure reports, charts, and other visualizations that help you easily review summaries of your data.
8. Make sure the software has a robust notification engine
Software can shoulder the burden of getting people to do what they are supposed to do (reminders), alerting people to when an action is needed (notifications), sharing information (messaging) and sending them information (report notifications). Be sure to review the strength of all notification features of the software, as this can be a huge help during reporting season—and it can lighten the burden on your inbox as well.
Multi-purpose notifications
Look for routine workflow notifications to ensure you are notified when a workflow step is completed AND if a workflow step is ignored beyond the due date.
Actionable notifications
Look for reporting notifications that will send the link (URL) to applicable users so they can quickly jump to the information in the software. No one likes knowing a report is ready, but then having to log in and search for it.
Group and individual notifications
Ensure you can send notifications by individual user OR to user groups. It can be very tedious to select large numbers of individuals for routine notifications—it is much easier to select “all Facility XYZ EHS staff”.
Decide where to receive notifications
Consider in-app messaging to keep important information in front of the users and spare their inbox.
Final thoughts: Imagine what implementation success looks like
While you are evaluating software options, use these points as a guide to make sure you choose a solution that will truly make a difference for your organization’s sustainability initiatives and reporting goals.
As more sustainability software solutions appear in the marketplace, it can be difficult for a company to discern which features really matter for its workflow. Try a simple exercise—imagine what a perfect sustainability management business process would look like if you found the perfect software solution. Consider the challenges you face now, and what it would look like if those problems were handled by your software.
Then, ask how well the sustainability software you’re considering will make this dream a reality. The right software selection can help reduce operational risk, fulfill regulatory reporting requirements in less time and with less effort, and provide safeguards against bad data and missed deadlines. All you have to do is ask the right questions.
Get more tips for what to look for when evaluating EHS&S software!
https://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/locus_screenshot_lp-applications-menu-on-desktop_1504x1156.png11561504Locus Product Teamhttps://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/locus_logo_2x.pngLocus Product Team2019-11-11 06:20:222021-04-19 08:05:13Top 8 Things to Look For in Sustainability Software
Locus Technologies is proud to have attended this year’s NAEM EHS&S Forum in Toronto. We were represented by Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus, and forum first-timer, Aaron Edwards, Marketing Associate at Locus.
The forum gave us the opportunity to learn, both from our peers in discussions about EHS&S goals, and from the diverse lineup of respected speakers and presenters. You spoke and we listened. This year, the prevailing topic of discussion was the growth of expectation surrounding sustainability in organizations.
Sustainability initiatives are rapidly moving to the forefront of institutional policy at leading organizations. As consumers, investors, and shareholders are increasingly supporting more sustainable organizations, executives are expecting more impactful sustainability initiatives from their EHS&S departments. Not only that, but executives inherently expect sustainability initiatives to positively affect the bottom line. This means that today’s EHS&S professionals have to manage sustainability initiatives that are vital to company success as well as regulatory management and reporting, often with limited resources.
Our conversations at the NAEM Forum often revolved around the time-consuming nature of regulatory compliance interfering with the escalated focus on sustainability. Many of the professionals we spoke with are dealing with multiple EHS&S platforms, each used for a specific function. Time management is increasingly more essential to EHS&S managers, and juggling between uni-tasked platforms is detrimental to effective sustainability efforts.
Locus developers have designed our software to reduce the labor-intensiveness of regulatory compliance. We offer a configurable single-platform solution for decreasing the amount of time you spend managing KPIs. From available modules in waste management, audit tracking, GHG reporting, and more—our configurable software allows more time to improve your company’s sustainability initiatives.
Sustainability is no longer an afterthought in the eyes of executives, consumers, investors, or shareholders. Having one robust software platform can greatly help EHS professionals integrate that “&S” seamlessly with their other responsibilities.
[sc_button link=”/company/contact/” text=”Continue the conversation” link_target=”_self” color=”ffffff” background_color=”52a6ea” centered=”1″]
https://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Aaron-Wes-Booth-NAEM_900x650.jpg650900Aaron Edwardshttps://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/locus_logo_2x.pngAaron Edwards2019-10-24 06:11:032021-08-27 09:33:24When it comes to EHS&S, the “&S” shouldn’t be an afterthought
In this infographic, we have outlined a few of the ways EHS programs benefit from having an AWS-hosted solution. Locus customers recently received these benefits as a result of moving our entire infrastructure to Amazon Web Services—the world’s leading cloud. Learn more about the move to AWS.
Contact us to learn more about these benefits
https://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/locus_graphic_aws-cover-1.jpg375600Locus Product Teamhttps://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/locus_logo_2x.pngLocus Product Team2019-08-19 07:45:352020-06-01 09:02:52Infographic: 6 Benefits of EHS on AWS
AI and Big Data to Drive EHS Decisions via Multi-tenant SaaS
With data and information streaming from devices like fire hydrants, there is little benefit from raw data, unless a company owning the data has a way to integrate the data into its record system and pair it with regulatory databases and GIS. That is where the advancement in SaaS tools and data sources mashups has helped set the stage for AI as a growing need.
Humans are not very good at analyzing large datasets. This is particularly true with data at the planetary level that are now growing exponentially to understand causes and fight climate change. Faced with a proliferation of new regulations and pressure to make their companies “sustainable” EHS departments keep adding more and more compliance officers, managers, and outside consultants, instead of investing in technology that can help them. Soon, they will be turning to AI technology to stay on top of the ever-changing regulatory landscape.
AI, in addition to being faster and more accurate, should make compliance easier. Companies spend too much time and effort on the comprehensive quarterly or annual reporting—only to have to duplicate the work for the next reporting period. The integrated approach, aided by AI, will automate these repetitive tasks and make it easier than just having separate analyses performed on every silo of information before having a conversation with regulators.
In summary, whether it is being used to help with GHG emissions monitoring and reporting, water quality management, waste management, incident management, or other general compliance functions, AI can improve efficiency, weed out false-positive results, cut costs and make better use of managers’ time and company resources.
Another advantage of AI, assuming it is deployed properly, concerns its inherent neutrality on data evaluation and decision making. Time and time again we read in the papers about psychological studies and surveys that show people on opposite sides of a question or topic cannot even agree on the “facts.” It should not be surprising then to find that EHS managers and engineers are often limited by their biases. As noted in the recent best-seller book by Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics laureate Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” when making decisions, they frequently see what they want, ignore probabilities, and minimize risks that uproot their hopes. Even worse, they are often confident even when they are wrong. Algorithms with AI built-in are more likely to detect our errors than we are. AI-driven intelligent databases are now becoming powerful enough to help us reduce human biases from our decision-making. For that reason, large datasets, applied analytics, and advanced charting and data visualization tools, will soon be driving daily EHS decisions.
In the past, companies almost exclusively relied upon on-premise software (or single-tenant cloud software, which is not much different from on-premise). Barriers were strewn everywhere. Legacy systems did not talk to one another, as few of the systems interfaced with one another. Getting data into third-party apps usually required the information to be first exported in a prescribed format, then imported to a third-party app for further processing and analysis. Sometimes data was duplicated across multiple systems and apps to avoid the headache of moving data from one to another. As the world moves to the multi-tenant SaaS cloud, all this is now changing. Customers are now being given the opportunity to analyze not just their company’s data, but data from other companies and different but potentially related and coupled categories via mashups. As customers are doing so, interesting patterns are beginning to emerge.
The explosion of content—especially unstructured content—is an opportunity and an obstacle for every business today.
The emergence of artificial intelligence is a game-changer for enterprise EHS and content management because it can deliver business insights at scale and make EHS compliance more productive. There are numerous advantages when you combine the leading multi-tenant EHS software with AI:
Ability to handle the explosion of unstructured content where legacy on-premise EHS solutions can’t.
AI can organize, illuminate, and extract valuable business insights if all your content is managed in one secure location in the cloud.
Locus helps you take advantage of best-of-breed AI technologies from industry leaders and apply them to all your content.
We are seeing in the most recent NAEM white paper, Why Companies Replace Their EHS&S Software Systems, that people want the ability to integrate with other systems as a top priority. Once the ability to share/consolidate data is available, AI is not far behind in the next generation of EHS/Water Quality software.
This concludes the four-part blog series on Big Data, IoT, AI, and multi-tenancy. We look forward to feedback on our ideas and are interested in hearing where others see the future of AI in EHS software – contact us for more discussion or ideas! Read the full Series: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.
Contact us to learn more about Locus uses IoT and AI
https://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/locus_graphic_ai_1488x800.png8001488Locus Product Teamhttps://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/locus_logo_2x.pngLocus Product Team2019-08-02 05:40:442020-03-06 08:11:04Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Compliance–Revisited–Part 4: AI, Big Data + Multi-Tenancy = The Perfect System
Multi-tenancy offers distinct benefits over traditional, single-tenant software hosting. A multi-tenant SaaS provider’s resources are focused on maintaining a single, current version of the application, rather than having its resources diluted in an attempt to support multiple software versions for its customers. If a provider is not using multi-tenancy, it may be hosting or supporting thousands of single-tenant customer implementations. By doing so, a provider cannot aggregate information across customers and extract knowledge from large data sets as every customer may be housed on a different server and possibly a different version of software. For these reasons, it is almost impossible and prohibitively expensive to deliver modern AI tools via single-tenancy.
Multi-tenancy has other advantages as well. Because every customer is on the same version of the software and the same instance, machine-learning (a prerequisite for building an AI system) can happen more quickly as large datasets are constantly fed into a single system. A multi-tenant SaaS vendor can integrate and deploy new AI features more quickly, more frequently, and to all customers at once. Lastly, a single software version creates more of a sense of community among users and facilitates the customers’ ability to share their lessons learned with one another (if they chose to do that). Most of today’s vendors in the EH&S software space cannot offer AI, sustain their businesses, and grow unless they are a true multi-tenant SaaS provider. Very few vendors are.
AI
Almost 30 years after the publication of our paper on the hazardous data explosion, SaaS technologies combined with other advancements in big data processing are rising to the challenge of successful processing, analyzing, and interpreting large quantities of environmental and sustainability data. It is finally time to stop saying that AI is a promising technology of the future. A recent Gartner study indicates that about 20 percent of data will be created or gathered by computers by 2018. Six billion connected devices will acquire the ability to connect and share data with each other. This alone will fuel AI growth as we humans cannot interpret such massive amounts of data.
Gone are the days where EHS software was just a database. There are two factors that are fueling the adoption of AI technologies for water quality management and EHS compliance. First, there is a vast increase that we have mentioned of data that needs sorting and understanding (big data). Second, there is the move to true multi-tenant SaaS solutions, which enables the intake and dissection of data from multiple digital sources (streaming data) from multiple customers, all in real-time.
AI has entered the mainstream with the backing and advocacy of companies like IBM, Google, and Salesforce, who are heavily investing in the technology and generating lots of buzzes (and we are seeing the consequent talent war happening industry-wide). It is remarkable to observe how quickly AI is proliferating in so many verticals, as CBS’s 60 Minutes segment showed us.
For our purposes, let’s look at where AI is likely to be applied in the EHS space. The mission-critical problem for EHS enterprise software companies is finding solutions that both enhance compliance and reduce manual labor and costs. This is where AI will play a major role. So far, companies have largely focused on aggregating their data in a record system(s); they have done little to interpret that data without human interaction. To address the ever-changing growth in environmental regulations, companies have been throwing people at the problem, but that is not sustainable.
AI and natural language processing (NLP) systems have matured enough to read through the legalese of regulations, couple them with company’s monitoring and emissions data, and generate suggestions for actions based on relevant regulations and data. Take, for example; a CEMS installed at many plants to monitor air emissions in real-time. Alternatively, a drinking water supply system monitoring for water quality. In each of these systems, there are too many transactions taking place to monitor manually to ascertain which ones are compliant and which ones are not? I see no reason why similar algorithms that are used for computerized trading (as described in the recent best-seller “Flash Boys”) to trade stocks in fractions of a second cannot be used for monitoring exceedances and automatically shutting down discharges if there is an approaching possibility of emission exceedance. It is an onerous task to figure out every exceedance on a case-by-case basis. Intelligent databases with a built-in AI layer can interpret data on arrival and signal when emissions exceed prescribed limits or when other things go wrong. The main driver behind applying AI to EHS compliance is to lower costs and increase the quality of EHS compliance, data management, and interpretation, and ultimately, to avoid all fines for exceedances.
For example, a large water utility company has to wade through thousands of analytical results to look for outliers of a few dozen chemicals they are required to monitor to stay compliant. Some of these may be false-positives, but that still leaves some results to be investigated for outliers. Each of those investigations can take time. However, if a software algorithm has access to analytical results and can determine that the problem rests with a test in the lab, that problem can be solved quickly, almost without human interaction. That is powerful.
Combing through data and doing this by hand or via spreadsheet could take days and create a colossal waste of time and uncertainty. Hundreds of billable hours can be wasted with no guaranteed result. Using AI-driven SaaS software to determine what outliers need investigation allows compliance managers, engineers, and chemists to focus their expertise on just these cases and thus avoid wasting their time on the remaining ones that the AI engine indicates need no further examination.
Predictive analytics based on big data and AI will also make customer data (legacy and new) work harder for customers than any team(s) of consultants. A good analogy that came to me after watching 60 minutes is that the same way the clinical center in North Carolina used AI to improve cancer treatment for their patients, engineers and geologists can improve on selecting the site remedy that will be optimized for given site conditions and will lead to a faster and less expensive cleanup with minimum long-term monitoring requirements.
A final example where AI will be playing a role is in the area of enterprise carbon management. SaaS software is capable of integrating data from multiple sources, analyzing and aggregating it. This aggregated information can then be distributed to a company’s divisions or regulatory agencies for final reporting and validation/verification, all in real-time. This approach can save companies lots of time and resources. Companies will be able to access information from thousands of emission sources across the states, provinces, and even countries where their plants are located. Because each plant is likely to have its set of regulatory drivers and reporting requirements, these would have to be incorporated into the calculation and reporting engine. After data from each plant is uploaded to a central processing facility, the information would be translated into a “common language,” the correct calculation formulae and reporting requirements applied, and the results then returned to each division in a format suitable for reporting internally and externally.
Blockchain for EHS—Looking ahead
And finally, another emerging technology, blockchain, will further augment the power of AI for EHS monitoring and compliance. While blockchain is in its infancy, its decentralized approach coupled with AI will bring another revolution to EHS compliance and water monitoring.
Parts one, two, and four of this blog series complete the overview of Big Data, IoT, AI, and multi-tenancy. We look forward to feedback on our ideas and are interested in hearing where others see the future of AI in EHS software – contact us for more discussion or ideas!
Contact us to learn more about Locus uses IoT and AI
https://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/locus_graphic_ai_1488x800.png8001488Locus Product Teamhttps://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/locus_logo_2x.pngLocus Product Team2019-07-19 06:07:122020-03-06 08:19:49Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Compliance–Revisited–Part 3: Multi-Tenancy and AI
I love the article by Geoffrey Moore on the power of software as a service (SaaS) business model published on LinkedIn. In SaaS’s Real Triumph he writes: “by far the greatest contribution of SaaS is to free the enterprise from the tyranny of the product release model.”
He cites the operational burden, enterprise-wide distraction and associated cost to roll out an enterprise software and then the subsequent hesitation to repeat that when a new release of that software becomes available as that deployment model is not sustainable nor affordable. Companies spend big dollars buying and then deploying EHS software that they know will be outdated in just a few years. Only IT personnel benefits from that model as it may extend their employment for a few years before IT department goes out of business for good. Moore points out the painful truth, stating: “you have paid maintenance of 18 to 20% per year for anywhere from five to ten years for the express purpose of not availing yourself of the innovation created during that time period.”
Probably the main benefit of SaaS multi-tenancy (that is frequently overlooked during the software selection process) is no software versioning. This is because multi-tenant software typically provides a rolling upgrade program: incremental and continuous improvements. It is an entirely new architectural approach to software delivery and maintenance model. Companies have to develop applications from the ground up for multi-tenancy. Legacy client-server or single-tenant software cannot qualify for multi-tenancy. Let’s take a look at definitions:
Single-Tenant – A single instance of the software and supporting infrastructure serves a single customer. With single-tenancy, each customer has his or her own independent database and instance of the software. Essentially, there is no sharing happening with this option.
Multi-Tenant – Multi-tenancy means that a single instance of the software and its supporting infrastructure serves multiple customers. Each customer shares the software application and also shares a single database. Each tenant’s data is isolated and remains invisible to other tenants.
Benefits of SaaS Multi-Tenant Architecture
The multi-tenant architecture provides lower costs through economies of scale: With multi-tenancy, scaling has far fewer infrastructure implications than with a single-tenancy-hosted solution because new customers get access to the same software.
Shared infrastructure leads to lower costs: SaaS allows companies of all sizes to share infrastructure costs. Not having to provision or manage any infrastructure or software above and beyond internal resources enables businesses to focus on everyday tasks.
Ongoing maintenance and updates: Customers don’t need to pay costly upgrades to get new features or functionality.
Configuration can be done while leaving the underlying codebase unchanged: Single-tenant-hosted solutions are often customized, requiring changes to an application’s code. This customization can be costly and can make upgrades expensive and time-consuming because the upgrade might not be compatible with customers changes to the earlier software version.
Multi-tenant solutions are designed to be highly configurable so that businesses can make the application perform the way they want. There is no changing the code or data structure, making the upgrade process easy.
Multi-tenancy ensures that every customer is on the same version of the software. As a result, no customer is left behind when the software is updated to include new features and innovations. A single software version also creates a unique sense of community where customers and partners share knowledge, resources, and learning. Smart managers work with their peers and learn from them and what they are doing. A multi-tenant SaaS provider’s resources are focused on maintaining a single, current (and only) version of the application, rather than spread out in an attempt to support multiple software versions for customers. If a provider isn’t using multi-tenancy, it may be hosting thousands of single-tenant customer implementations. Trying to maintain that is too costly for the vendor, and those costs, sooner or later, become the customers’ costs.
A vendor who is invested in on-premise, hosted, and hybrid models cannot commit to providing all the benefits of a true SaaS model due to conflicting revenue models. Their resources are going to be spread thin, supporting multiple versions rather than driving innovation. Additionally, if the vendor makes the majority of their revenue selling on-premise software, it is difficult for them to fully commit to a true SaaS solution since the majority of their resources are allocated to supporting the on-premise software.
Before you engage future vendors for your enterprise EHS software, assuming you already decided to go with SaaS solution, ask these questions:
Does your software have version numbers?
Do you charge for upgrades and how often do you upgrade?
If the answer is yes to any of these two questions, you should not consider that vendor as they are not true multi-tenant SaaS. You should not select that vendor if they answer “we are in the process of switching to multi-tenancy.” Multi-tenancy train departed a long time ago, and no EHS vendor who is single-tenant is not going to make that switch in time to make it work.
And if they suddenly introduce a “multi-tenant” model (after selling an on-premises version for 10+ years) who in the world would want to migrate to that experimental cloud without putting the contract out to bid to explore a switch to well established and market-tested true multi-tenant providers? The first-mover advantage when it comes to multi-tenancy is a huge advantage for any vendor.
https://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/multi-tenant-2.png9471185Neno Duplanhttps://www.locustec.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/locus_logo_2x.pngNeno Duplan2019-07-08 06:41:032021-04-15 13:34:03Does your EHS software have a version number?
More recently, big data has become more closely tied to IoT-generated streaming datasets such as Continued Air Emission Measurements (CEMS), real-time remote control and monitoring of treatment systems, water quality monitoring instrumentation, wireless sensors, and other types of wearable mobile devices. Add digitized historical records to this data streaming, and you end up with a deluge of data. (To learn more about big data and IoT trends in the EHS industry, please read this article: Keeping the Pulse on the Planet using Big Data.)
In the 1989 Hazardous Data Explosionarticle that I mentioned earlier, we first identified the limitation of relational database technology in interpreting data and the importance that IoT (automation as it was called at the time) and AI were going to play in the EHS industry. We wrote:
“It seems unavoidable that new or improved automated data processing techniques will be needed as the hazardous waste industry evolves. Automation (read IoT) can provide tools that help shorten the time it takes to obtain specific test results, extract the most significant findings, produce reports and display information graphically,”
We also claimed that “expert systems” (a piece of software programmed using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. Such systems use databases of expert knowledge to offer advice or make decisions.) and AI could be possible solutions—technologies that have been a long time coming but still have a promising future in the context of big data.
“Currently used in other technical fields, expert systems employ methods of artificial intelligence for interpreting and processing large bodies of information.”
Although “expert systems” as a backbone for AI did not materialize as it was originally envisioned by researches, it was a necessary step that was needed to use big data to fulfil the purpose of an “expert”.
AI can be harnessed in a wide range of EHS compliance activities and situations to contribute to managing environmental impacts and climate change. Some examples of application include AI-infused permit management, AI-based permit interpretation and response to regulatory agencies, precision sampling, predicting natural attenuation of chemicals in water, managing sustainable supply chains, automating environmental monitoring and enforcement, and enhanced sampling and analysis based on real-time weather forecasts.
Parts one, three, and four of this blog series complete the overview of Big Data, IoT, AI and multi-tenancy. We look forward to feedback on our ideas and are interested in hearing where others see the future of AI in EHS software – contact us for more discussion or ideas!
Contact us to learn more about Locus uses IoT and AI
