US EPA fenceline monitoring data collection officially begins on January 30, 2018. We have put together an infographic to show you some of the ways Locus EIM can help you streamline, consolidate, and take control of all your important environmental information using maps, data reports, formatted outputs, charts, and more!
Click image for larger version
GIS Day was established in 1999 to showcase the power and flexibility of geographical information systems (GIS). In celebration of the 55th birthday of GIS, we’ve compiled a brief history of the evolution of this powerful technology, with a special focus on how it can be used in EHS applications to make environmental management easier.
Not only is GIS more powerful than ever before—it is also vastly more accessible. Anyone with Internet access can create custom maps based on publicly available data, from real-time traffic conditions to environmental risk factors, to local shark sightings. Software developers, even those at small companies or startups, now have access to APIs for integrating advanced GIS tools and functionality into their programs.
Before you can understand where GIS is today, it helps to know how it started out. This year is the 55th anniversary of the work done by Roger Tomlinson in 1962 with the Canada Land Inventory. We consider this the birth of GIS, and Mr. Tomlinson has been called the “father of GIS”.
The original GIS used computers and digitalization to “unlock” the data in paper maps, making it possible to combine data from multiple maps and perform spatial analyses. For example, in the image shown here from the Canada Land Inventory GIS, farms in Ontario are classified by revenue to map farm performance.
An early GIS system from the Canada Land Inventory, in Data for Decisions, 1967
Photo: Mbfleming. “Data for Decisions (1967).” YouTube, 12 Aug. 2007, https://youtu.be/ryWcq7Dv4jE.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
In 1969, Jack Dangermond founded Esri, which became the maker of, arguably, the world’s most popular commercial GIS software. Esri’s first commercial GIS, ARC/INFO, was released in 1982, and the simpler ArcView program followed in 1991. Many of today’s most skilled GIS software developers can trace their roots back to this original GIS software.
Back then, GIS work required expensive software packages installed on personal computers or large mainframe systems. There was no Google Maps; all map data had to be manually loaded into your software. Getting useful data into a GIS usually required extensive file manipulation and expertise in coordinate systems, projections, and geodesy.
While the government, utility, and resource management sectors used GIS heavily, there was not much consumer or personal use of GIS. Early GIS professionals spent much of their time digitizing paper maps by hand or trying to figure out why the map data loaded into a GIS was not lining up properly with an aerial photo. This may sound familiar to those who have been in the environmental industry for awhile.
Esri’s ArcView 3.2 for desktop computers (from the 1990s)
https://map.sdsu.edu/geog583/lecture/Unit-3.htm
How much has changed since those early days! After the release of OpenStreetMap in 2004, Google Maps and Google Earth in 2005, and Google Street View in 2007, GIS has been on an unstoppable journey—from only being used by dedicated GIS professionals on large computers in specific workplaces, to be accessible to anyone with an internet browser or a smartphone. High-quality map data and images—often the most expensive item in a GIS project in the 1990’s — are now practically free.
Just think how revolutionary it is that anyone can have instant access to detailed satellite images and road maps of almost anywhere on Earth! Not only can you perform such mundane tasks as finding the fastest route between two cities or locating your favorite coffee shop while on vacation—you can also see live traffic conditions for cities across the globe; view aerial images of countries you have never visited; track waste drums around your facility; and get street level views of exotic places. Back in 1991, such widespread access to free map data would have seemed like something straight out of science fiction.
Traffic conditions in London, 3:30 pm 10/16/2017, from Google Maps
South Base Camp, Mount Everest, Google StreetView
Obviously, the amount of spatial data needed to provide detailed coverage of the entire globe is far too large to be stored on one laptop or phone. Instead, the data is distributed across many servers “in the cloud.” Back in the 1990s, everything for one GIS system (data, processing engine, user interface) needed to be in the same physical place—usually one hard drive or server. Now, thanks to the internet and cloud computing, the data can be separate from the software, creating “distributed” GIS.
The combination of freely available data with distributed GIS and the power of smart phones has led us to the age of “neogeography”—in which anyone (with some technical knowledge) can contribute to online maps, or host their maps with data relevant to their personal or professional needs. GIS no longer requires expensive software or cartographical expertise; now, even casual users can create maps linking multiple data sources, all in the cloud.
Google’s MyMaps is an example of a tool for easily making your maps. Maps can range from the playful, such as locations of “Pokemon nests,” to the serious, such as wildfire conditions.
Google MyMaps of Pokemon Nest Locations
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1anyDs-H7hOtGQaxaTwuLjulUrVM&hl=en&usp=sharing
These online maps can be updated in real time (unlike paper maps) and therefore kept current with actual conditions. Such immediate response is instrumental in emergency management, where conditions can change rapidly, and both first responders and the public need access to the latest data.
Map showing wildfire and traffic conditions in northern California, 10/16/2017
https://google.org/crisismap/us-wildfires
Furthermore, software programmers have created online GIS tools that let non-coders create their maps. These tools push the boundaries of distributed GIS even further by putting the processing engine in the cloud with the data. Only the user interface runs locally for a given user. During this period of GIS history, it became easy to create “mashups” for viewing different types of disparate data at once, such as natural hazard risks near offices, pizza stores near one’s neighborhood, EPA Superfund sites near one’s home, property lines, flood plains, landslide vulnerability, and wildfire risk.
Floodplain data for Buncombe County, NC
https://buncombe-risk-tool.nemac.org
Another significant advance in GIS technology is the ability to integrate or include advanced GIS tools and features in other computer programs. Companies such as Google and Esri have provided toolkits (called APIs, or application programming interfaces) that let coders access GIS data and functions inside their programs. While neogeography shows the power of personal maps created by the untrained public, computer programmers can use APIs to create some very sophisticated online GIS tools aimed at specific professionals or the public.
One example is the publicly-available Intellus application that Locus Technologies developed and hosts for the US Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. It uses an Esri API and distributed GIS to provide access to aerial images and many decades of environmental monitoring data for the Los Alamos, NM area. Users can make maps showing chemical concentrations near their home or workplace, and they can perform powerful spatial searches (e.g., “find all samples taken within one mile of my house in the last year”). The results can be color-coded based on concentration values to identify “hot spots”.
Map from Intellus showing Tritium concentrations near a specified location
https://www.intellusnmdata.com
Another example of more sophisticated forms of analysis is integration of GIS with environmental databases. Many government facilities and private vendors incorporate GIS with online data systems to let public users evaluate all types of information they find relevant.
For example, contour lines can be generated on a map showing constant values of groundwater elevation, which is useful for determining water flow below ground. With such powerful spatial tools in the cloud, any facility manager or scientist can easily create and share maps that provide insight into data trends and patterns at their site.
Groundwater contour map where each line is a 10 ft. interval, from the Locus EIM system
Other examples include monitoring air emissions at monitoring sites (like US EPA’s AirData Air Quality Monitors, shown below) and actual stream conditions from the USGS (also shown below).
Screenshot from US EPA AirData Air Quality Monitors interactive GIS mapping platform, showing Long Beach, California
Screen capture of USGS National Water Information System interactive GIS map tool, showing a site in Mountain View, California
One particularly exciting aspect of GIS today is the ability to use GIS on a smartphone or tablet. The GIS APIs mentioned above usually have versions for mobile devices, as well as for browsers. Programmers have taken advantage of these mobile APIs, along with freely available map data from the cloud, to create apps that seamlessly embed maps into the user experience. By using a smartphone’s ability to pinpoint your current latitude and longitude, these apps can create personalized maps based on your actual location.
A search in the Apple AppStore for “map” returns thousands of apps with map components. Some of these apps put maps front-and-center for traditional navigation, whether by car (Waze, MapQuest, Google), public transit (New York Subway MTA Map, London Tube Map), or on foot (Runkeeper, Map My Run, AllTrails). Other apps use maps in a supporting role to allow users to find nearby places; for example, banking apps usually have a map to show branches near your current location.
What’s really exciting are the apps that allow users to enter data themselves via a map interface. For example, HealthMap’s Outbreaks Near Me not only shows reports of disease outbreaks near your location, but it also lets you enter unreported incidents. The GasBuddy app shows the latest gasoline prices and lets you enter in current prices. This “crowdsourcing” feature keeps an app up-to-date by letting its users update the map with the latest conditions as they are happening.
The Outbreaks Near Me app for phones (left) and the GasBuddy app for tablets (right)
EHS professionals can further harness the power of GIS using mobile applications. For example, in the Locus Mobile app for field data collection, users can enter environmental data—such as temperature or pH measurements—from a sampling location, then upload the data back to cloud-based environmental management software for immediate review and analysis. Mobile apps can also support facility compliance audits, track current locations of hazardous waste drums, collect on-scene incident data (complete with photos), and record exact locations for mapping by colleagues back in the office.
GIS-enabled mobile apps also typically include a map interface for navigating to data collection points and tracking visited locations. Other key features to look for include ad hoc location creation for capturing unplanned data—this lets users create new data collection points “on the fly” simply by clicking on the map.
Views of many different mobile app use cases from tracking drums to collecting field data
Where will GIS as a whole go from here? It’s possible that augmented reality, virtual reality, and 3D visualization will continue to expand and become as ubiquitous as the current “2D” maps on browsers and phones. Also, the “internet of things” will surely have a GIS component because every physical “thing” can be tied to a geographical location. Similarly, GIS can play an important role in “big data” by providing the spatial framework for analysis.
GIS is one of the most effective ways to convey information to a wide range of users, from corporate managers looking at the company’s key metrics to operational personnel looking for incidents across facilities and trying to find trends. It is a highly intuitive data query interface that empowers users to explore the data hidden deep in enterprise EHS databases. The examples presented above are just the tip of the iceberg for the range of possibilities to simplify communication of information and look more broadly across enterprises to identify where real or potential issues lie.
An EHS software system should have many ways to extract data and information to form insights beyond a few “canned” reports and charts. A spatially-accurate picture can often provide more actionable insight than tables and text. Imagine being able to see spill locations, incident locations, environmental monitoring stations for air quality, wastewater outfalls, central and satellite waste accumulation area locations, and PCB and asbestos equipment and/or storage locations—all visually represented on an actual map of your facility and its surroundings. All these types of maps are invaluable in an enterprise EHS software system and should be a critical item on your checklist when selecting software for your EHS needs.
Thanks to the GIS Timeline for providing some of the history for this article.
About guest blogger— Dr. Todd Pierce, Locus Technologies
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.
Introducing Locus GIS+. All the functionality you love in EIM’s classic Google Maps GIS for environmental management— now integrated with the powerful cartography, interoperability, & smart-mapping features of Esri’s ArcGIS platform!
Maybe you’re already using Locus’ iOS app for field data collection, or maybe you’re just curious about how it integrates with Locus’ cloud software. Either way, we’ve put together a list of the ten coolest features of Locus Mobile.
The full-featured version of the Locus Mobile iOS application works for either Locus EIM or Locus Platform. This means that customers using both our key products can manage their work in a single, unified mobile application.
Locations can be added to EIM without coordinates (Latitude/Longitude or Northing/Easting). If a location without coordinates is used in a Provision File, the location will have a 
symbol associated with it (a 
symbol if coordinates are known). When a location with a triangle is selected, the user is prompted with the option to ‘Set Location’ – capture the current coordinates (Lat/Long) of where the user is located. When the provision file is loaded to EIM, the data manager will have the option to update the location in EIM with these coordinates. The accuracy of these mobile captured coordinates are below survey grade, but can be updated another time.
If you’re not sure who will be sampling on a given day, you can assign multiple users to your provision files. Later, you can easily see who is responsible for certain sample collection data.
Has your Locus Platform been customized to use specific icons and colors? These icons are also used in Locus Mobile, so if you use both Locus Platform and the mobile app, you’ll instantly recognize your data types while out in the field.
Although you can see the status on your map and location list, sometimes those lists are very long, and the map gets crowded when large field events are taking place. Tap the 
icon to see a log of the collected samples for the day.
For EIM Locus Mobile users, when you’re collecting a lot of field data, the “fat finger” problem can make for some colorful data entry errors. That’s why we built in the ability to specify valid data ranges for any parameter— and provide a warning when you’re about to enter a bad value during field data collection.
We know that not every field location is served by wireless or a strong cell signal, so Locus Mobile is built to keep working whether you’re online or offline. This gives you the flexibility to collect field data from anywhere, then sync back to Locus EIM or Locus Platform when you can.
Choose which required fields you want to be visible in Locus Mobile. You also have the option to include your optional field information without displaying them. This gives you control over which fields you see while in the field.
Dealing with a long list of locations? The search field above the location list lets you start typing the Location ID or Location Description to filter the list. Even better, the extent of the map will adjust to zoom to the matching selections!
Locus Mobile can access your device’s camera and scan QR codes for quick and efficient retrieval of individual locations included in a given provision file.
Our product teams are constantly working to improve and add new functionality to Locus Mobile. If you’re a current user, please let your Locus Account Manager know if you have any ideas for how we can make your field data collection workflows faster and easier. If you’re not using Locus Mobile yet, please ask them for a free demo!
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 27 November 2017 — Locus Technologies, the industry leader in cloud-based environmental compliance and information management EHS software, announces a suite of enhancements to its Railroad Incident application within its state-of-the-art Locus Platform SaaS solution—a scalable, robust app-building platform for easily designing and deploying apps that precisely conform to an organization’s existing business processes and requirements.
Since 2013, Locus has maintained its position on the cutting edge of railroad industry EHS solutions, as one of the first Railroad Incident software providers in the market assisting U.S. Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)-regulated organizations in maintaining compliance.
The FRA imposes rigorous reporting requirements upon Class II railroads, and maintaining compliance remains difficult for many EHS departments. While railroad safety and risk mitigation are top priorities for these departments, many are finding that trying to stay up-to-date with the latest regulations while using legacy, homegrown systems to manage compliance programs is nearly impossible.
Locus found that EHS professionals who are tasked with completing many FRA forms for each incident considered it an arduous and lengthy process, requiring multiple checks to prevent errors and oversights. Keeping in line with its guiding principle of customer success, Locus developed its Railroad Incident application so that users could easily and efficiently manage and report railroad accidents and incidents, with built-in quality control checks to verify that all reporting is in compliance with FRA regulations. Locus software has successfully generated hundreds of these reports with a single-click solution that instantly completes FRA forms for direct submittal to the agency.
The Locus Platform Railroad Incident application includes:
“Locus is proud to have been supporting the railroad industry for years with this important functionality. When it comes to incident management, company managers have an easily accessible, all-encompassing view of what’s occurring across all of their different facilities, sites, and incident locations. Our easy-to-use data entry forms for railroad incidents with one-click incident section selection enables the seamless capture, analyzing, reporting, e-signing, and submittal of critical FRA-specific data—all from within our industry-tested Railroad Incident application,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus Technologies. “Locus’ Railroad Incident application is a single repository in the cloud that offers railroad-specific functionality for managing incident tracking, investigations, and analyzing key safety metrics aimed at reducing accidents and mitigating risks.”
For more information about Locus’ Railroad Incident application and other EHS and sustainability solutions, visit https://www.locustec.com.
EHS SaaS Multitenancy explained and why it matters.
There is a considerable degree of (intended) confusion in the EHS software space when it comes to cloud computing and multitenancy. If your software vendor cannot share statistics in real time like shown in the figure nearby, most likely they do not run on a multitenant SaaS platform.
The real-time information on system performance and security of SaaS cloud platform is the most important element that frequently gets overlooked during EHS software selection process. Success in the cloud is built on trust. Trust starts with transparency.
Our real time status monitoring (ran by an independent provider of web monitoring services) provide transparency around service availability and performance for Locus’ EHS SaaS products.
Just as with airlines that fly through clouds, our entire business is built on trust and security of our cloud offerings. Over 700,000 locations around the globe trust Locus to safeguard their data in the cloud.
Cloud Computing
Since the turn of the millennium, cloud computing has revolutionized the landscape of the computing world because it provides enterprise-grade computing resources that are affordable and instantly available. Clouds provide straightforward access to IT resources—you just access as many resources as you need when you need them, and never have to deal with the complexities of managing all of the underlying infrastructures that provide those resources. EHS manager job is suddenly a lot simpler and easier with cloud computing. You don’t even need help from IT department (if you don’t want it).
Multitenancy
Multitenancy is the fundamental technology that clouds use to share computing resources cost-efficiently and securely. Just like a bank—in which many tenants cost-efficiently share a hidden, common infrastructure, yet utilize a defined set of highly secure services, with complete privacy from other tenants—a cloud uses multitenancy technology to share IT resources securely among multiple applications and tenants (businesses, organizations, etc.) that use the cloud. Some clouds use virtualization-based architectures to isolate tenants; others use custom software architectures to get the job done. The multitenant design of a cloud service can have a dramatic impact on the application delivery and productivity of an IT organization, yet most CIOs, CTOs, system architects, and developers who use clouds don’t give it a second thought because it’s all magic that transparently happens behind the scenes.
Locus Platform is the proven cloud application development platform that powers popular Locus cloud EHS and Sustainability applications as well as custom applications that customers build to satisfy their specific EHS+S requirements.
Today, November 15, is GIS Day—an annual celebration established in 1999 to showcase the power and flexibility of geographical information systems (GIS).
Not only is GIS more powerful than ever before—it is also vastly more accessible. Anyone with Internet access can create custom maps based on publicly available data, from real-time traffic conditions to environmental risk factors, to local shark sightings. Software developers, even those at small companies or startups, now have access to APIs for integrating advanced GIS tools and functionality into their programs.
As the Director of EIM and GIS Development at Locus, I lead efforts to integrate GIS with our software applications to deliver our customers’ spatial data using the latest GIS technology. Let us take a look at how far GIS has come since I started working with it and at some of the new and exciting possibilities on the horizon.
Before you can understand where GIS is today, it helps to know how it started out. This year is the 55th anniversary of the work done by Roger Tomlinson in 1962 with the Canada Land Inventory. We consider this the birth of GIS, and Mr. Tomlinson has been called the “father of GIS”.
The original GIS used computers and digitalization to “unlock” the data in paper maps, making it possible to combine data from multiple maps and perform spatial analyses. For example, in the image shown here from the Canada Land Inventory GIS, farms in Ontario are classified by revenue to map farm performance.
An early GIS system from the Canada Land Inventory, in Data for Decisions, 1967
Photo: Mbfleming. “Data for Decisions (1967).” YouTube, 12 Aug. 2007, https://youtu.be/ryWcq7Dv4jE.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
In 1969, Jack Dangermond founded Esri, which became the maker of, arguably, the world’s most popular commercial GIS software. Esri’s first commercial GIS, ARC/INFO, was released in 1982, and the simpler ArcView program followed in 1991. That year, 1991, is also the year I started working with GIS, although I used the TransCAD system from Caliper before starting with Esri software a few years later.
Back then, GIS work required expensive software packages installed on personal computers or large mainframe systems. There was no Google Maps; all map data had to be manually loaded into your software. Getting useful data into a GIS usually required extensive file manipulation and expertise in coordinate systems, projections, and geodesy.
While the government, utility, and resource management sectors used GIS heavily, there was not much consumer or personal use of GIS. As for me, I spent a lot of time in my first job digitizing paper maps by hand or trying to figure out why the map data I had loaded into a GIS was not lining up properly with an aerial photo.
Esri’s ArcView 3.2 for desktop computers (from the 1990s)
https://map.sdsu.edu/geog583/lecture/Unit-3.htm
How much has changed since those early days! After the release of OpenStreetMap in 2004, Google Maps and Google Earth in 2005, and Google Street View in 2007, GIS has been on an unstoppable journey—from only being used by dedicated GIS professionals on large computers in specific workplaces, to be accessible to anyone with an internet browser or a smartphone. High-quality map data and images—often the most expensive item in a GIS project in the 1990’s — are now practically free.
Just think how revolutionary it is that anyone can have instant access to detailed satellite images and road maps of almost anywhere on Earth! Not only can you perform such mundane tasks as finding the fastest route between two cities or locating your favorite coffee shop while on vacation—you can also see live traffic conditions for cities across the globe; view aerial images of countries you have never visited, and get street level views of exotic places. Back in 1991, such widespread access to free map data would have seemed like something straight out of science fiction.
Traffic conditions in London, 3:30 pm 10/16/2017, from Google Maps
South Base Camp, Mount Everest, Google StreetView
Obviously, the amount of spatial data needed to provide detailed coverage of the entire globe is far too large to be stored on one laptop or phone. Instead, the data is distributed across many servers “in the cloud.” Back in the 1990s, everything for one GIS system (data, processing engine, user interface) needed to be in the same physical place—usually one hard drive or server. Now, thanks to the internet and cloud computing, the data can be separate from the software, creating “distributed” GIS.
The combination of freely available data with distributed GIS and the power of smart phones has led us to the age of “neogeography”—in which anyone (with some technical knowledge) can contribute to online maps, or host their maps with data relevant to their personal or professional needs. GIS no longer requires expensive software or cartographical expertise; now, even casual users can create maps linking multiple data sources, all in the cloud.
Google’s MyMaps is an example of a tool for easily making your maps. Maps can range from the playful, such as locations of “Pokemon nests,” to the serious, such as wildfire conditions.
Google MyMaps of Pokemon Nest Locations
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1anyDs-H7hOtGQaxaTwuLjulUrVM&hl=en&usp=sharing
These online maps can be updated in real time (unlike paper maps) and therefore kept current with actual conditions. Such immediate response is instrumental in emergency management, where conditions can change rapidly, and both first responders and the public need access to the latest data.
Map showing wildfire and traffic conditions in northern California, 10/16/2017
https://google.org/crisismap/us-wildfires
Furthermore, software programmers have created online GIS tools that let non-coders create their maps. These tools push the boundaries of distributed GIS even further by putting the processing engine in the cloud with the data. Only the user interface runs locally for a given user. During this period of GIS history, I created several mashups, including one for viewing natural hazard risks for my hometown. For this application, I combined several data types, including property lines, flood plains, landslide vulnerability, and wildfire risk.
Floodplain data for Buncombe County, NC
https://buncombe-risk-tool.nemac.org
Another significant advance in GIS technology is the ability to integrate or include advanced GIS tools and features in other computer programs. Companies such as Google and Esri have provided toolkits (called APIs, or application programming interfaces) that let coders access GIS data and functions inside their programs. While neogeography shows the power of personal maps created by the untrained public, computer programmers can use APIs to create some very sophisticated online GIS tools aimed at specific professionals or the public.
During my 10 years at Locus, I have helped create several such advanced GIS tools for environmental monitoring and data management. One example is the publicly-available Intellus application that Locus Technologies developed and hosts for the US Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. It uses an Esri API and distributed GIS to provide access to aerial images and many decades of environmental monitoring data for the Los Alamos, NM area. Users can make maps showing chemical concentrations near their home or workplace, and they can perform powerful spatial searches (e.g., “find all samples taken within one mile of my house in the last year”). The results can be color-coded based on concentration values to identify “hot spots”.
Map from Intellus showing Tritium concentrations near a specified location
https://www.intellusnmdata.com
Locus Technologies also provides more sophisticated forms of analysis in its EIM cloud-based environmental management system. For example, contour lines can be generated on a map showing constant values of groundwater elevation, which is useful for determining water flow below ground. With such powerful spatial tools in the cloud, anyone at the organization, from facility managers to scientists, can easily create and share maps that provide insight into data trends and patterns at their site.
Groundwater contour map where each line is a 10 ft. interval, from the Locus EIM system
One particularly exciting aspect of GIS today is the ability to use GIS on a smartphone or tablet. The GIS APIs mentioned above usually have versions for mobile devices, as well as for browsers. Programmers have taken advantage of these mobile APIs, along with freely available map data from the cloud, to create apps that seamlessly embed maps into the user experience. By using a smartphone’s ability to pinpoint your current latitude and longitude, these apps can create personalized maps based on your actual location.
A search in the Apple AppStore for “map” returns thousands of apps with map components. Some of these apps put maps front-and-center for traditional navigation, whether by car (Waze, MapQuest, Google), public transit (New York Subway MTA Map, London Tube Map), or on foot (Runkeeper, Map My Run, AllTrails). Other apps use maps in a supporting role to allow users to find nearby places; for example, banking apps usually have a map to show branches near your current location.
What’s really exciting are the apps that allow users to enter data themselves via a map interface. For example, HealthMap’s Outbreaks Near Me not only shows reports of disease outbreaks near your location, but it also lets you enter unreported incidents. The GasBuddy app shows the latest gasoline prices and lets you enter in current prices. This “crowdsourcing” feature keeps an app up-to-date by letting its users update the map with the latest conditions as they are happening.
The Outbreaks Near Me app for phones (left) and the GasBuddy app for tablets (right)
Here at Locus Technologies, we use the power of GIS in our Locus Mobile app for field data collection. Users can enter environmental data, such as temperature or pH measurements from a monitoring well, and upload the data back to the EIM cloud for later review and analysis. The Locus Mobile app includes a map interface for navigating to data collection points and tracking visited locations. The app also lets users create new data collection points “on the fly” simply by clicking on the map.
The map interface in the Locus Mobile app; blue dotted circles indicate locations that are not yet started.
Where will GIS go from here? It’s possible that augmented reality, virtual reality, and 3D visualization will continue to expand and become as ubiquitous as the current “2D” maps on browsers and phones. Also, the “internet of things” will surely have a GIS component because every physical “thing” can be tied to a geographical location. Similarly, GIS can play an important role in “big data” by providing the spatial framework for analysis. It will be interesting to see where GIS is when we celebrate the 20th GIS Day in 2019!
Thanks to the GIS Timeline for providing some of the history for this article.
About guest blogger— Dr. Todd Pierce, Locus Technologies
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.
Introducing Locus GIS+. All the functionality you love in EIM’s classic Google Maps GIS for environmental management— now integrated with the powerful cartography, interoperability, & smart-mapping features of Esri’s ArcGIS platform!
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 24 October 2017 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in multi-tenant SaaS EHS and water quality management software, is pleased to announce that Carollo Engineers (Carollo), one of the largest firms in the country focused exclusively on water projects, selected Locus EIM SaaS as its water quality management software. Carollo also subscribed to the Locus Platform SaaS for mobile-enabled asset management.
“Managing water quality data is critical to our clients’ projects,” said Justin Sutherland, Manager of Carollo’s Water Applied Research Center (Water ARC). “Water ARC is a new service provided by Carollo that integrates and enhances our capabilities to collect this data through field analytical, pilot testing, and laboratory-based treatability testing services. Key parts of this new service will be our improved management of field analytical and pilot testing equipment, nationwide, with Locus Platform and streamlined collection and analysis of various data sources with Locus EIM. Incorporating these innovative tools in our project work will help us achieve a higher level of efficiency in managing quality data for our clients.”
Locus EIM is a comprehensive water quality management software, designed to manage mission-critical water quality and related subsurface and surface data by helping organizations gather, organize, manage, report, and visualize sampling, analytical, and subsurface data for compliance and assurance reporting. Locus’ software serves a variety of vertical markets including water, oil and gas, power-generating utilities, and food and beverage. Locus EIM and Locus Mobile pair together to create a viable modern cloud platform that is particularly well suited for water markets.
“Our mission is to help organizations like Carollo achieve their water quality management and environmental stewardship goals, by providing them the centralized software and tools to control and manage data and complex workflow process for water-related projects,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus. “Our EIM cloud-based software for water quality management provides our customers with a highly scalable and a feature-rich application. It gives water companies strong analytical power, streamlined field sampling capabilities, and mobile collection tools, as well as compliance management and reporting. We are pleased Carollo will be utilizing EIM, Locus Mobile, and Locus Platform to ensure that their customers are provided with the highest quality water projects possible.”
“Corporations today want to invest into one environmental and sustainability solution that offers scalability, system flexibility, and user friendliness, while at the same time, achieve operational cost reductions and improve their environmental stewardship,” said Jennifer Peterson, Vice President of Commercial Accounts at Locus. “Our mission is to help organizations like Carollo advance their innovative technology desires for streamlining data collection and reporting goals by providing them with the software tools that help control overall environmental compliance activities and yet provide efficient, easy-to-use, scalable solutions that will grow with Carollo.”
ABOUT CAROLLO ENGINEERS
At Carollo Engineers, water is our focus, our business, and our passion. For more than 80 years, Carollo has provided a full range of innovative planning, design, and construction management services to meet the water and wastewater needs of municipalities, public agencies, private developers, and industrial firms. To learn more about how Carollo is “Working Wonders With Water®,” visit www.carollo.com.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 17 October 2017 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in multi-tenant SaaS EHS compliance and sustainability management software, introduces the new Sustainability application on its award-winning Locus Platform. The new Sustainability application is fully integrated with other Locus Platform SaaS applications and Locus’ calculation engine, and it is intended to redefine how companies organize, manage, and calculate their greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories and other Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).
Today, environmental, sustainability, and energy managers for organizations of all sizes face myriad options from software suppliers offering various single-domain applications. To address this industry challenge, Locus designed the new Sustainability application on the versatile Locus Platform to provide rich functionality, simply, to make it easier for customers to make the most of their data management, compliance, and reporting requirements.
The Sustainability application will provide Locus’ customers a comprehensive, integrated system for monitoring and managing their energy use, water, and other sustainability efforts throughout their facilities. Users will have full control over the setup of the source of emissions, emissions factors as well the equations used in generating calculations. The reports and calculations are also fully transparent and auditable, so that report outputs can be traced back to input data.
GHG inventories may be the result of mandatory state, regional, or national reporting programs, such as California Air Resource Board (AB 32), US EPA Mandatory Reporting Rule, or European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). Organizations need sustainability software and a GHG calculation engine that can calculate GHGs automatically and accurately from all emission-producing activities, at all their facilities, anywhere in the world. Some companies may choose to report their sustainability metrics via voluntary programs, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) or the CDP, or some other voluntary reporting standard. Locus can handle all related calculations and reporting requirements via a single app. No competing software available in the market today can do this.
The new Locus Platform Sustainability application and calculation engine support simultaneous calculations using multiple methods, so that users can input data once and report to federal, state, and voluntary reporting programs, according to each proper protocol. The application can also support direct electronic reporting formats for many reporting programs, so that manual transcription and submittal of data are no longer necessary. This is a very powerful capability and a huge advantage to customers in terms of efficiency and cost savings.
“We’ve updated Locus’ sustainability module based on industry demands,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus. “The requirements and procedures for GHG reporting are varied, complex, and rapidly evolving. To ensure compliance, companies need a calculation engine that can handle complex equations using appropriate emission factors, conversion factors, and calculation methodologies for each reporting program. The right calculation engine can reduce the stress, time, and potential inaccuracies found in homegrown accounting methods. This isn’t a product of different solutions pieced together to look like one; it is the ‘whole solution.’ Our approach means a dramatically lower cost than what customers have seen in the past with the ERP providers or with single-point solutions from different single-tenant vendors,” Hawthorne explained.
As a leading accredited GHG verification company in California, Locus directly observed challenges that many companies experience with GHG inventory calculation, coupled with the gross inadequacy of tools currently available in the market. Informed by their experience verifying hundreds of GHG inventories, Locus developed the new Sustainability application and calculation engine with a deep, unique insight into the customer’s needs.
Locus will have leading industry experts available to discuss the features of the Sustainability application at the National Association for Environmental Management (NAEM) 2017 EHS Management Forum, October 25–27, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Photo: Rao, Gitanjali. “DE3MYSL Submission – Tethys: The Water Lead Contamination Detector” YouTube
Gitanjali Rao, an 11-year-old budding scientist from Tennessee, has developed an innovative and radical device using nanotubes to test for lead contamination in water. Named ‘Tethys’, this innovative method to test lead in water could prove to be an effective solution in averting water crises like in Flint, Michigan. The device is linked to a smartphone app for instant visualization of results.
The young scientist was shocked when she learned about the water crisis in Flint and was inspired to find a solution to detect water contamination by speedy analysis of lead in water. She is currently one of the top ten finalists in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, one of the most distinguished science competitions in the U.S.
When her device is dipped in water, the lead-sensitive material in the nanotube indicates if the water is contaminated with lead. The result is then sent to a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone that shows if the water has safe levels of lead or has concentrations of concern. When the device detects lead levels higher than 15 parts per million, the device warns that the water is unsafe.
“There are over 5,000 water systems in the U.S. alone with lead contamination issues,” says Rao in her entry video. “Timely detection and preventative action can help mitigate the problem, but today it takes a long time because of chemical labs and expensive equipment. My solution addresses a core issue of speedy detection of lead contamination, allowing preventative action and even saving lives!”
Gitanjali is currently working with a mentor at 3M for possible commercialization.
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Gitanjali is truly an inspiration to the rest of us as we look for better solutions to the environmental challenges we face today. Here at Locus, we believe that with great ideas like these and the resources and drive to pursue them, many of these challenges can be solved!
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 1 August 2017 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in cloud-based EHS software, is pleased to announce that Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe (PLPT) Environmental Department selected Locus EIM SaaS as its environmental data quality management and reporting software solution.
PLPT was looking for a way to streamline their current data management and reporting activities for the environmental data collected at their Reservation. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribes’ Reservation is located thirty-five miles northeast of Reno, Nevada, in a remote desert area and includes the surface of a terminal desert lake, Pyramid Lake. Pyramid Lake is one of the most valuable assets of the Tribe and is entirely enclosed within the boundaries of the Reservation. Much of the economy on the Pyramid Lake Reservation is centered around fishing and recreational activities at Pyramid Lake. PLPT monitors and reports to US EPA on the environmental status of their natural resources under their Tribal Water Quality Standards. They are required to submit electronically via the Water Quality Exchange, or WQX framework, which is the mechanism for submitting data to the EPA STORET Data Warehouse.
PLPT needed a robust data system to manage a wide range of manual and automated sampling, the ability to seamlessly import internal and external analytical laboratory data, and, most importantly, a way to create push-button submittals in the exacting WQX format.
Locus EIM will automate environmental data management activities for PLPT and improve data reporting and visualization needs for their users, simplifying their current manual processes and meeting their complex compliance and regulatory submittal requirements. PLPT will also use Locus Mobile to capture field data at the source, streamlining data collection and processing for their key lake and river sampling.
Locus EIM is a comprehensive SaaS solution designed to manage critical environmental and sustainability data, helping all types of organizations to organize, manage, report, and visualize sampling, analytical, and subsurface data for compliance and assurance reporting. Locus EIM, teamed with Locus Mobile field application, is a viable solution well suited for the unique demands of natural resource environmental monitoring.
“Our mission is to help organizations like PLPT achieve their environmental stewardship goals by providing them with the software tools to control and streamline the overall process for management of all environmental data”, said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus. “With our recently released WQX export functionality, we have added yet another key tool that greatly and efficiently simplifies the complex process of required EPA reporting, while providing a robust software solution that will meet their needs for years to come.”
ABOUT PYRAMID LAKE PAIUTE TRIBE
The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe is governed by 10 Tribal Council members who are elected bi-annually in December and on staggered two-year terms. The tribe operates under the Indian Reorganization Act Constitution and By-Laws approved on January 26, 1936 by the Department of Interior.
The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe has a Government-to-Government Relationship with the Federal Government. Therefore, the Tribe contracts with or receives grants directly from Federal Agencies or the State of Nevada, to provide services to the Tribal members and residents of the Reservation. The revenue generated by the Tribe is used to support local Tribal government activities and to supplement the programs that provide direct services to the Tribal members or residents.