Integration with other systems, whether on-premises or in the cloud, has become a key wishlist item for many EHS software buyers. It allows you to take advantage of other tools used by your organization (or available from third parties) to simplify processes, access information, and enhance communication, both internally and externally.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 27 January 2020
Locus Technologies, (Locus), industry leader in water quality, EHS, sustainability, and compliance management software, is pleased to announce they are among the first accredited verification bodies for the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program administered by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Locus verifiers were accredited for fuel pathway applications, alternative fuel transactions, and petroleum-based fuel reports.
Originally adopted in 2009, the goal of the LCFS program is to reduce the carbon intensity (CI) of the transportation fuel pool. The LCFS is one of the key AB 32 measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California, while reducing petroleum dependency and achieving improved air quality. The program has grown in scope, and certified third-party verifiers can now review both applications and routine reporting.
Locus Technologies has been a certified third-party reviewer of GHG verifications for CARB since 2010 under the Mandatory Reporting Rule and maintains an unmatched track record. Not one of over 500 GHG verifications by Locus has been overturned, a standard the company intends to match with LCFS reporting.
Locus has staff and expertise to review Tier 1 fuel pathway applications and annual reports under LCFS as well as other LCFS projects, with verifiers located in San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and in the Midwest. Locus also offers software products designed to assist reporters in complying with the LCFS program.
A recent NAEM study explored the main reasons EHS&S professionals look to replace their current software configuration. Among the most reported issues were overall performance, customer support, and software customization. The following infographic highlights both why EHS&S professionals are seeking new software, and wheat criteria are most important in shopping for a new software system.
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:
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.
Let’s look back on the most exciting new features and changes made in EIM, Locus’ environmental data management software, during 2019!
In August, Locus migrated EIM into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. EIM already had superior security, reliability, and performance in the Locus Cloud. The move to AWS improves on those metrics and allows Locus to leverage AWS specific tools that handle big data, blockchain, machine learning, and data analytics. Furthermore, AWS is scalable, which means EIM can better handle demand during peak usage periods. The move to AWS helps ensure that EIM remains the world’s leading water quality management software.
EIM now supports Single Sign-On (SSO), allowing users to access EIM using their corporate authentication provider. SSO is a popular security mechanism for many corporations. With SSO, one single login allows access to multiple applications, which simplifies username and password management and reduces the number of potential targets for malicious hacking of user credentials. Using SSO with EIM requires a one-time configuration to allow EIM to communicate with a customer’s SSO provider.
The Locus GIS+ solution now supports creating data callouts, which are location-specific crosstab reports listing analytical, groundwater, or field readings. A user first creates a data callout template using a drag-and-drop interface in the EIM enhanced formatted reports module. The template can include rules to control data formatting (for example, action limit exceedances can be shown in red text). When the user runs the template for a specific set of locations, EIM displays the callouts in the GIS+ as a set of draggable boxes. The user can finalize the callouts in the GIS+ print view and then send the resulting map to a printer or export the map to a PDF file.
For customers who don’t require the full EIM package, Locus now offers EIM One, which gives the ability to customize EIM functionality. Every EIM One purchase comes with EIM core features: locations and samples; analytical and field results; EDD loading; basic data views; and action limit exceedance reports. The customer can then purchase add-on packages to get just the functionality desired–for example a customer with DMR requirements may purchase the Subsurface and Regulatory Reporting packages. EIM One provides customers with a range of pricing options to get the perfect fit for their data management needs.
EIM can now be configured to accept data from IoT (internet of things) streaming devices. Locus must do a one-time connection between EIM and the customer’s IoT streaming application; the customer can then use EIM to define the devices and data fields to capture. EIM can accept data from multiple devices every second. Once the data values are in EIM, they can be exported using the Expert Query tool. From there, values can be shown on the GIS+ map if desired. The GIS+ Time Slider automation feature has also been updated to handle IoT data by allowing the time slider to use hours, minutes, and seconds as the time intervals.
EIM currently supports several dozen regulatory agency export formats. In 2019, Locus added two more exports for CIWQS (California Integrated Water Quality System Project) and the NCDEQ (North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality). Locus continues to add more formats so customers can meet their reporting requirements.
EIM is the world’s leading water quality management software, and has been used since 1999 by many Fortune 500 companies, water utilities, and the US Government. Locus added two key reports to EIM for Water in 2019 to further support water quality reporting. The first new report returns chlorine averages, ranges, and counts. The second new report supports the US EPA’s Lead and Copper rule and includes a charting option. Locus will continue to enhance EIM for Water by releasing the 2019 updates for the Consumer Confidence Report in January 2020.
Locus continues to upgrade and improve the EIM user interface and user experience. The most noticeable change in 2019 was the overhaul of the Non-analytical Views pages in EIM, which support data exports for locations, samples, field readings, groundwater levels, and subsurface information. Roughly 25 separate pages were combined into one page that supports all these data views. Users are directed through a series of filter selections that culminate in a grid of results. The new page improves usability and provides one centralized place for these data reports. Locus plans to upgrade the Analytical Views in the same way in 2020.
To help customers find the correct EIM menu function, Locus added a search box at the top right of EIM. The search box returns any menu items that match the user’s entered search term. In 2020, Locus will expand this search box to return matching help file documents and EDD error help, as well as searches for synonyms of menu items.
The EIM EDD loader now has a new “View history” option for viewing previously loaded data for the locations and parameters in the EDD. This function lets users put data in the EDD holding table into proper historical context. Users can check for any unexpected increases in parameter concentrations as well as new maximum values for a given location and parameter.
Let’s take a look back on the most exciting new features and changes made in Locus Platform during 2019!
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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]
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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]
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‘Process Flows’ have been added, which guide users in completing processes following a simple step-by-step interface.[/sc_icon_with_text]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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.
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.
Today is GIS Day, a day started in 1999 to showcase the many uses of geographical information systems (GIS). To celebrate the passage of another year, this blog post examines how maps and GIS show time, and how Locus GIS+ supports temporal analysis for use with EIM, Locus’s cloud-based, software-as-a-service application for environmental data management.
Since GIS was first imagined in 1962 by Roger Tomlinson at the Canada Land Inventory, GIS has been used to display and analyze spatial relationships. Every discrete object (such as a car), feature (such as an acre of land), or phenomenon (such as a temperature reading) has a three-dimensional location that can be mapped in a GIS as a point, line, or polygon. The location consists of a latitude, longitude, and elevation. Continuous phenomenon or processes can also be located on a map. For example, the flow of trade between two nations can be shown by an arrow connecting the two countries with the arrow width indicating the value of the traded goods.
However, everything also has a fourth dimension, time, as locations and attributes can change over time. Consider the examples listed above. A car’s location changes as it is driven, and its condition and value change as the car gets older. An acre of land might start covered in forest, but the land use changes over time if the land is cleared for farming, and then later if the land is paved over for a shopping area. The observed temperature at a given position changes with time due to weather and climate changes spanning multiple time scales from daily to epochal. Finally, the flow of trade between two countries changes as exports, imports, and prices alter over time.
Traditional flat maps already collapse three dimensions into two, so it’s not surprising that such maps do not handle the extra time dimension very well. Cartographers have always been interested in showing temporal data on maps, though, and different methods can be employed to do so. Charles Minard’s famous 1861 visualization of Napoleon’s Russian campaign in 1812-1813 is an early example of “spatial temporal” visualization. It combines two visuals – a map of troop movements with a time series graph of temperature – to show the brutal losses suffered by the French army. The map shows the army movement into Russia and back, with the line width indicating the troop count. Each point on the chart is tied to a specific point on the map. The viewer can see how troop losses increased as the temperature went from zero degrees Celsius to -30 degrees. The original thick tan line has decreased to a black sliver at the end of the campaign.
Charles Minard’s map of Napoleon’s Russian campaign in 1812-1813.
The Minard visual handles time well because the temperature chart matches single points on the map; each temperature value was taken at a specific location. Showing time changes in line or area features, such as roads or counties, is harder and is usually handled through symbology. In 1944, the US Army Corps of Engineers created a map showing historical meanders in the Mississippi River. The meanders are not discrete points but cover wide areas. Thus, past river channels are shown in different colors and hatch patterns. While the overlapping meanders are visually complex, the user can easily see the different river channels. Furthermore, the meanders are ‘stacked’ chronologically, so the older meanders seem to recede into the map’s background, similar to how they occur further back in time.
Inset from Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River.
Another way to handle time is to simply make several maps of the same features, but showing data from different times. In other words, a temporal data set is “sliced” into data sets for a specific time period. The viewer can scan the multiple maps and make visual comparisons. For example, the Southern Research Station of the US Forest Service published a “report card” in 2011 for Forest Sustainability in western North Carolina. To show different land users over time, small maps were generated by county for three years. Undeveloped land is colored green and developed land is tan. Putting these small maps side by side shows the viewer a powerful story of increasing development as the tan expands dramatically. The only drawback is that the viewer must mentally manipulate the maps to track a specific location.
Land Use change over time for Buncombe County, NC
The previous map examples prove that techniques exist to successfully show time on maps. However, such techniques are not widespread. Furthermore, in the era of “big data” and the “Internet of Things”, showing time is even more important. Consider two examples. First, imagine a shipment of 100 hazardous waste containers being delivered on a truck from a manufacturing facility to a disposal site. The truck has a GPS unit which transmits its location during the drive. Once at the disposal site, each container’s active RFID tag with a GPS receiver tracks the container’s location as it proceeds through any decontamination, disposal, and decommission activities. The locations of the truck and all containers have both a spatial and a temporal component. How can you map the location of all containers over time?
As a second example, consider mobile data collection instruments deployed near a facility to check for possible contamination in the air. Each instrument has a GPS so it can record its location when the instrument is periodically relocated. Each instrument also has various sensors that check every minute for chemical levels in the air plus wind speed and temperature. All these data points are sent back to a central data repository. How would you map chemical levels over time when both the chemical levels and the instrument locations are changing?
In both cases, traditional flat maps would not be very useful given the large amounts of data that are involved. With the advent of GIS, though, all the power of modern computers can be leveraged. GIS has a powerful tool for showing time: animation. Animation is similar to the small “time slice” maps mentioned above, but more powerful because the slices can be shown consecutively like a movie, and many more time slices can be created. Furthermore, the viewer no longer has to mentally stack maps, and it is easier to see changes over time at specific locations.
Locus has adopted animation in its GIS+ solution, which lets a user use a “time slider” to animate chemical concentrations over time. When a user displays EIM data on the GIS+ map, the user can decide to create “time slices” based on a selected date field. The slices can be by century, decade, year, month, week or day, and show the maximum concentration over that time period. Once the slices are created, the user can step through them manually or run them in movie mode.
To use the time slider, the user must first construct a query using the Locus EIM application. The user can then export the query results to the GIS+ using the time slider option. As an example, consider an EIM query for all benzene concentrations sampled in a facility’s monitoring wells since 2004. Once the results are sent to the GIS+, the time slider control might look like what is shown here. The time slices are by year with the displayed slice for 3/30/2004 to 3/30/2005. The user can hit play to display the time slices one year at a time, or can manually move the slider markers to display any desired time period.
Locus GIS+ time slider
Here is an example of a time slice displayed in the GIS+. The benzene results are mapped at each location with a circle symbol. The benzene concentrations are grouped into six numerical ranges that map to different circle sizes and colors; for example, the highest range is from 6,400 to 8,620 µg/L. The size and color of each circle reflect the concentration value, with higher values corresponding to larger circles and yellow, orange or red colors. Lower values are shown with smaller circles and green, blue, or purple colors. Black squares indicate locations where benzene results were below the chemical detection limit for the laboratory. Each mapped concentration is assigned to the appropriate numerical range, which in turn determines the circle size and color. This first time slice for 2004-2005 shows one very large red “hot spot” indicating the highest concentration class, two yellow spots, and several blue spots, plus a few non-detects.
Time slice for a year for a Locus GIS+ query
Starting the time slider runs through the yearly time slices. As time passes in this example, hot spots come and go, with a general downward trend towards no benzene detections. In the last year, 2018-2019, there is a slight increase in concentrations. Watching the changing concentrations over time presents a clear picture of how benzene is manifesting in the groundwater wells at the site.
GIS+ time slider in action
While displaying time in maps has always been a challenge, the use of automation in GIS lets users get a better understanding of temporal trends in their spatial data. Locus continues to bring new analysis tools to their GIS+ system to support time data in their environmental applications.
Time slice for a Locus GIS+ query
Locus GIS+ features all of the functionality you love in EIM’s classic Google Maps GIS for environmental management—integrated with the powerful cartography, interoperability, & smart-mapping features of Esri’s ArcGIS platform!
Learn more about Locus’ GIS solutions.
Dr. Pierce manages a team of programmers tasked with development and implementation of Locus’ EIM application, which lets users manage their environmental data in the cloud using Software-as-a-Service technology. Dr. Pierce is also directly responsible for research and development of Locus’ GIS (geographic information systems) and visualization tools for mapping analytical and subsurface data. Dr. Pierce earned his GIS Professional (GISP) certification in 2010.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Your sustainability software should make it easy to see and understand the formulas that produced any calculated data values.
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.
Find out what formats you need for regulatory reporting, and make sure your software supports exporting in these formats.
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.
Immediate, inline alerts about outlier data values help prevent last-minute surprises.
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 managers to lock down data are important for preventing edits to data that is being prepared for reporting.
There should be an easy way to see the current workflow status of any data in your system.
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.
Your software should be automatically recording a history of all changes at each step of your workflow.
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.
Look for options to easily configure reports, charts, and other visualizations that help you easily review summaries of your data.
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.
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.
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.