Locus’ CEO to present Cloud Solution for Environmental Information Management for Railroad Industry at the Railroad Environmental Conference at University of Urbana-Champaign.

Environmental, Energy, Emissions, and Compliance Management in the Cloud presented by Locus’ CEO, Neno Duplan.

RailTec, University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign

Abstract of Original 2012 Presentation Follows:

As they go about the lengthy, tedious, expensive and very often dirty job of decontaminating polluted industrial sites, environmental consultants bill their clients by the hour, capturing…and then completely controlling…the superabundance of project-related environmental data that underlies remediation strategies. As a result of this process, a “consultant-centric model” has dominated the field of corporate environmental data management.  This is primarily because environmental data is not integral to the daily functioning of a company, and because the quantities and complexities of the data produced are enormous.  So company managers are generally quite comfortable with letting their consultants do all the querying, analysis, reporting…and then storing the data.

And since the consultants derive increased billing hours from controlling their clients’ data, the ultimate incentive for them is a renewed or extended contract, an outcome which, though certainly not guaranteed, is optimized by their control of the data.

But change is coming.  The environmental data management practices of corporations and their consultants are undergoing a profound transformation as new Web-based software provides a low-cost means of making available the critical information that organizational decision makers need not only to better understand and manage their overall environmental liabilities but also to improve their operations by analyzing the valuable data.  While environmental data is collected primarily for compliance reporting, when mined with the right tools it can also be used to point to weaknesses in data gathering and processing operations and provide valuable information on how to eliminate or reduce these.

A new “company-centric” environmental data management model now offers a remote data repository situated in the Internet “Cloud” and equally accessible in real time to all, including both the client and its consultants.

Cloud computing is a software outsourcing model that offers great promise for managing environmental, energy, emissions, and compliance  information of any type. It is slowly making its way into companies that have to manage large quantities of data and meet routine compliance requirements. The model fits the way environmental information needs to be managed through mashups (applications that integrate data or functionality from multiple sources or technologies), and has the potential to completely upend the way railroad industry  organize, manage, and report their environmental and energy data and information. Companies that have large portfolios of sites and facilities can use Cloud computing as a very low-cost means to take control of their mission-critical environmental data and information, gain new functionality and capabilities, and at the same time circumvent the involvement of their IT department if they so desire.

Cloud-based data management can completely replace existing stand-alone data systems and reporting tools to provide a comprehensive integrated solution to the railroad industry’s one of the most vexing problems—the centralization and management of complex data pertaining to contaminated water, groundwater, soil, and air.

At many contaminated transportation sites or at facilities and other sites contaminated with hydrocarbons, Cloud-based information management systems already provide market-tested solutions that were rapidly deployed and provide a high level of functionality and data security, an extensive set of QA/QC standards, and scalability.

The Cloud provides a platform for the complete electronic processing of analytical data, emissions data, compliance activities, and sustainability data beginning with the upload of electronic data deliverables from labs, and terminating in state-mandated or federal regulatory exports and reporting. When companies use such Software as a Service (SaaS) models, they eliminate most of the difficulties associated with the management of complex data sets while offering the opportunity for more rapid customization of data reporting to meet the changing needs of the industry.

CPA Firm Issues SOC 2SM Report on Controls over Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy at Locus Technologies

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 24 September 2012 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Cloud-computing enterprise software for environmental, energy, air, water, and compliance management,

A SOC 2SM report is designed to meet the needs of existing or potential customers  who need assurance about  the effectiveness of controls at Locus that are relevant to  the security, availability, or processing integrity of the system used by Locus to process customers’  information, or the confidentiality or privacy of that information. The SOC 2SM report places Locus in a rare category among environmental data management providers to have attained this rigorous classification. In today’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) and risk-management environment, it is essential that service providers like Locus demonstrate that they have adequate controls and safeguards in place so customers can be confident that their data are safe.

“We are pleased that our SOC 2SM report has shown that we have the appropriate controls in place to mitigate risks related to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy of customers’ environmental, energy, sustainability, and compliance data stored in Locus Cloud,” said Dr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “The culture here at Locus is to put our customers first at all times, and it is essential that they feel secure in trusting us with their data.”

The following principles and related criteria have been developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) for use by practitioners in the performance of trust services engagements:

  • Security. The system is protected against unauthorized access (both physical and logical).
  • Availability. The system is available for operation and use as committed or agreed.
  • Processing integrity. System processing is complete, accurate, timely and authorized.
  • Confidentiality. Information designated as confidential is protected as committed or agreed.
  • Privacy. Personal information is collected, used, retained, disclosed and destroyed in conformity with the commitments in the entity’s privacy notice and with criteria set forth in generally accepted privacy principles issued by the AICPA and CICA. 

A SOC 2SM report is an internal control report on the services provided by Locus to its customers and provides valuable information that existing and potential customers of the service organization need to assess and address the risks associated with an outsourced service.

Locus Scores in Green Quadrant of Environmental Management Software Report

Locus’ Cloud-based Software Recognized for Deployment Capabilities

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 17 September 2012 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Cloud-computing enterprise software for environmental, energy, air, water, and compliance management, has been recognized as one of 12 leading environmental management software suppliers globally in the report “Green Quadrant® Environmental Management Software, 2012.” This report by Verdantix, an independent analyst firm who provide data, analysis and advice in the areas of energy, environment and sustainability,  reveals that Locus offers a compelling feature/function set, and its large-scale deployments across industries respond to customers’ preferences for solutions that can match the expanding scale of their EH&S programs.

The Verdantix report recognizes Locus for having strong environmental management software capabilities, and awards it high scores for providing domain-specific and predefined environmental monitoring functionality. It recognizes Locus for providing easily configurable gateways for integration, strong target setting, benchmarking, and analytics tools; among a group of suppliers, the report recommends Locus’ suite of products and services for both firms that require a high level of integration, and firms that have mature strategies.

Thanks to Locus’ presence in the environmental management market for more than 10 years, boasting a solid customer base, and because Locus’ services are offered through the Cloud, its business model allows for flexible pricing models, quicker product updates to follow regulations, and faster deployment. In addition, the report notes that Locus has invested resources to develop specialized capabilities in waste and subsurface water-quality data management within its EIM software.

‘’In the past, implementing EH&S software has been driven by compliance and risk-reduction concerns. Our analysis uncovered a new desire among customers in sectors like chemicals and manufacturing to use software to improve environmental performance. This expands the business case beyond a narrow compliance mind-set,” said Emilie Beauchamp, Verdantix Industry Analyst. “Software suppliers now offer new capabilities to respond to firms’ ever-growing requirements to manage, report and optimize their environmental performance across greenhouse gases, hazardous waste, water, toxic releases, toxic chemicals, and refrigerants.’’

Locus ePortal addresses this need for broad-ranging environmental data management functionality. It provides full integration of energy and environment-related sustainability applications into environmental enterprise-resource planning (EERP). This platform for end-to-end energy and environmental sustainability management has been the core of Locus’ offering via the Cloud since 1999.

“We are very pleased that Verdantix has recognized Locus as one of the top suppliers of environmental management software,” said Dr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “The report recognized what long has been Locus’ strategy— shifting the agenda from that of a support and compliance process function up to a strategic and cost-reduction function for private and public-sector organizations. With our suite of diverse but well integrated products to organize water, energy, waste, and carbon emissions information across different regulatory frameworks, Locus will continue to lead the environmental software market,” noted Dr. Duplan.

“Forward-looking firms are already starting to deploy environmental management software on a global scale, but most multinationals have immature EH&S technology strategies. They manage their environmental data, systems, and processes through a patchwork of legacy apps, spreadsheets, and internally developed tools,’’ remarked David Metcalfe, CEO of Verdantix. “This Verdantix Green Quadrant product benchmark provides an independently researched, data-driven platform to help EH&S directors and CIOs accelerate and de-risk environmental management software selection.”

 

ABOUT VERDANTIX

Verdantix is an independent analyst firm. We provide authoritative data, analysis and advice to help our clients resolve their energy, environment and sustainability challenges. Through our global primary research and deep domain expertise we provide our clients with strategic advice, revenue generating services, best practice frameworks, industry connections and competitive advantage.

For further information, please visit www.verdantix.com.

Australia Will Join EU Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme

Australia recently announced that it will join the European Union’s carbon emissions trading scheme starting in mid-2015, a decision that most likely stemmed from the fact that they are one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters per capita, mostly because of their use of coal to generate power. This decision will result in the biggest emissions trading market on the planet.

Australia’s major polluters can currently start buying European carbon permits to cover their liabilities from July 2015, but Europeans must wait to buy Australian permits until mid-2018.

An unpopular carbon tax was passed in Australia on July 1st of this year. It stated that almost 300 of its biggest polluters had to pay 23 Australian dollars, which is equal to 24 US dollars, for every metric ton of carbon dioxide, or an equivalent carbon gas, that they emit. Due to this tax, Australians feared losing their competitive edge from being charged more than other countries. However, the linking of the Australian and EU systems has calmed these concerns.

This bond will provide the possibility of reducing compliance costs to businesses with operations both in Europe and Australia, and will support the overall goal of lowering emissions and battling climate change through international collaboration.

Locus Joins Water Week by Offering Water Quality Management Software in the Cloud

While some scientists may still disagree as to whether or not greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities are largely responsible for global warming change, there is almost no dispute that water-related issues represent a challenge to mankind that is of no less importance than climate change.

Any emission of unwanted gases into the air can be almost instantly remediated by cutting off the source. However, any gases that have escaped cannot be recaptured to be remediated. In contrast, water that is contaminated frequently can be treated, but the process is generally lengthy, costly, and energy-intensive.

Amid the rapidly growing concerns regarding the degradation of water quality and water scarcity, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) launched the CDP Water Disclosure, an initiative that seeks to increase reporting on water-related risks and opportunities, especially by companies operating in water-intensive sectors.  Governments and other voluntary reporting organizations such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) are expected to provide the industry with more water reporting frameworks in the near future that are similar to those that exist for carbon reporting. Furthermore, water-related activities such as pumping, purification, irrigation, energy production, hydro fracturing, etc. are some of the biggest, if not the biggest contributors to GHG emissions. It is estimated that over 25 percent of GHG emissions in California are attributable to water-related activities. The entire output of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant is spent on moving water in California, and that’s a lot of Giga-Watt hours (GWh).

Of all the types of water-related data that companies need, one stands out in terms of its sheer quantity and complexity: the measurements pertaining to water quality. Existing regulations require monitoring and reporting of the contamination of surface water bodies and groundwater by various industrial processes, spills, and other releases.  Monitoring and reporting on such activities generate enormous quantities of data that until recently have rarely been used for anything other than to comply with regulatory reporting requirements.  However, entities such as the CDP Water Disclosure project and the GRI reporting initiative are starting to shift the focus from compliance–based monitoring and reporting of effluents, to the scarcity and quality of drinking water supplies and the impact of energy associated with water activities on carbon emissions.

As detection technology improves and human exposure to low-level contamination is linked to more diseases, more testing will be required for ever smaller and smaller concentration levels.  All of this means only more and more information that needs to be captured, stored, managed, and reported.

If one can find information on almost any topic within seconds on the web and for free, why should companies pay their consultants to mine their own water, carbon, and other environmental data to find information that the company already owns? A different approach is called for, one that relies on new web-based software that gives environmental professionals Google-like abilities to search complex water data sets and growing piles of seemingly unrelated water quality information. Finding water quality information on the fly should be no different and as easy as creating graphs showing financial performance of the stock over time using one of the popular financial websites, such as Yahoo Finance.

New Web 2.0 technologies provide a low cost means of making critical information available that organizations need to understand and manage their overall water or carbon footprint. Web-based Environmental Information Management systems offered through Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms (increasingly referred to these days as Cloud Computing), can provide the collaborative software tools businesses need to (1) organize and manage their water quality information from a single virtual location, (2) automate workflow processes, 3) gain ownership of their data, and (4) open up relevant datasets to the public via overlays on web-based GIS technologies such as Google maps.  An added benefit of these systems is that they allow for the possibility of accessing and linking not just water quality data, but all relevant environmental information, including compliance, greenhouse gases, sustainability and climate change data, and even health data and information, from a single entry point on the web.

Governmental agencies, companies, and other NGOs that have to manage water quality data would benefit from adopting the Cloud Computing model. Cloud computing-based software allows companies to manage and organize their water quality data on a larger and more comprehensive scale, including water and carbon footprint reporting, thus avoiding the need to buy additional software or store the same data in more than one location.  It is slowly making its way into companies that have to manage large quantities of water quality data and meet routine compliance requirements. The Cloud-based enterprise software model fits the way environmental information needs to be managed through the use of mashups (applications that integrate data or functionality from multiple sources or technologies), and has the potential to completely upend the way corporations manage their water, carbon and other environmental data.  And with proliferation of smart phones connected to the Web, one can collect and report data in real time directly from a smart phone. In summary, what industry needs is Cloud-based Environmental Enterprise Resource Planning, or EERP.

Water quality issues pose potential liabilities of billions of dollars to businesses worldwide.  Companies would find themselves able to make quicker, more confident decisions at less cost if they managed the data associated with these risks using robust web-based information management systems similar to existing ERP systems.  What industry needs is a portal-like software platform that allows Single Sign On (SSO) to multiple applications for managing, organizing, and visualizing air, water, soil, emissions, energy and sustainability data that can easily mash up.

Innovation, collaboration are hallmarks of Asheville’s science and high tech industries

“There seems to be a lot more focus on collaboration and building the community rather than just the bottom line. People are more willing to come together for work and to share their expertise.” — Dr. Todd Pierce, Director, Geographic Information Systems, Locus Technologies

Locus is Featured in ENR Top 200 Environmental Firms List

Silicon Valley Business Journal Rates Locus Technology as one of the top five Silicon Valley Environmental Firms, First in Environmental Software

The biggest environmental firms have over 190 professionals combined in the valley.

2012 EPRI Groundwater Protection Workshop Wrap-Up

The most significant discussions focused on the recent Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) guidance to combine Underground Piping and Tank Integrity efforts with the Groundwater Protection program as a whole.

EPA Introduces New Air Quality Standards

Organizations around the world face increasing regulations focusing on environment, health and safety (EHS) issues. Managing these rules and regulations are a very resource-intensive activity with greater risk of brand damage, penalties, and fines for non-compliance.

Organizations have to spend significant resources in tracking these regulations carefully, and organizations have to be even more vigilant with changing international regulations, which can affect business agility and continuity.

This month Environmental Protection Agency announced new air quality standards intended to reduce the amount of soot that can be released into the air.

Environmental groups and public health advocates welcomed the move by the EPA, saying it would protect millions of Americans at risk for soot-related asthma attacks, lung cancer, heart disease and premature death.

EPA said that the new rule is based on a rigorous scientific review. All but six counties in the United States would meet the proposed standard by 2020 with no additional actions needed beyond compliance with existing and pending rules set by the EPA.

The rules include controversial regulations governing mercury emissions and cross-state air pollution emitted by power plants. The new rule would set the maximum allowable standard for soot in a range of 12 to 13 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The current annual standard is 15 micrograms per cubic meter. The EPA said it would start designating counties that fail to meet the new soot standards as soon as 2014.

Soot, made up of microscopic particles released from smokestacks, diesel trucks and buses, wood-burning stoves and other sources, contributes to haze and can burrow into lungs. Breathing in soot can cause lung and heart problems.