When choosing Locus, you can be confident that your EHS software is built and supported by the experts. Our team holds degrees and certifications in environmental engineering, mathematics, computer science, and beyond. We understand the challenges of EHS compliance and build our solutions with those in mind.
After reading about the IowaReporterApp used during the 2020 Iowa caucuses, it struck me how remarkably similar it is in intended function to the EHS&S software developed by my employer, Locus Technologies. Both their application and Locus’ mobile technology collect large quantities of sensitive data from several remote users at multiple facilities, allowing for instant calculation and reporting. What surprised me though, is just how vastly different their user implementation and data management methodology was from what is standard operating procedure at Locus.
In this blog, I will highlight some of the pitfalls of the IowaReporterApp, and compare it to Locus’ EHS&S software. Note, this article is not a political critique, but is an examination of data collection and data quality methods used during the caucuses.
Users were introduced to the IowaReporterApp just days before the caucuses and received no app-specific training. Many users were downloading the application on the night of the caucuses.
The Iowa caucuses have been held biennially for almost a half-century as the first major contest of the primaries. The date of the caucuses was a surprise to no one. As a result, app development deadlines should have given enough time for user implementation, through one-on-one training or presentations with appropriate support staff. If app deadlines were not met, there should have been a fallback to redundant reporting systems, like in the case of Nevada, who were also planning to use the app but have opted out after the debacle in Iowa.
When Locus introduces new users to our software, we take implementation seriously. Our customer support team is composed of domain experts who have actively built and used Locus software. We know the deadlines and the problems users typically face during the implementation process. From one-on-one and on-site training to quick turnaround, our support team does everything they can to ensure that users are comfortable with our product as soon as possible.
User implementation deadlines are all the more important given that the software had no real-world use to this point. While it is not advisable to go live with untested software, at the very least, having users stress test a product before field-use could have staved off a few issues.
This is something we see frequently with newer products and newer companies. Locus has over 20 years of experience creating EHS&S software used by U.S. government organizations and Fortune 500 companies. Our quality assurance team rigorously tests any update we bring to customers and doesn’t rush changes to sell a platform update, since every user is always on the same version of Locus software.
No one can question that Excel or Google Spreadsheets can perform math correctly, but what is frequently overlooked or not even considered, are the macros, custom functions, and calculations that are often added to spreadsheets when deployed for managing data and other tasks. If one fails, there need to be backups for reporting and storing data.
When the untested application predictably failed, users flocked to the phone lines as a redundancy. Manual data collection on such a scale created confusion and could not carry the load, and had no way of accounting for errors in data entry. At Locus, we understand the importance of EHS&S data, and maintain backups and full audit trails for all critical data, with quick restoration available so you can keep going if anything should happen.
The IowaReporterApp was not released in time to get approval in Apple’s app store, and it was sent out through beta testing platforms which required suspension of smartphone security settings.
ProPublica, a nonprofit organization who produces public interest investigative journalism, did a report on the security of the IowaReporterApp after the Iowa Caucuses. Shockingly, they found security problems to be “elementary” and that the app was so insecure that vote totals, passwords, and other sensitive information could have been intercepted or changed. Luckily, there seems to be no evidence of hacking or tampering with results.
Locus understands the need for security with sensitive data, and hosts our entire infrastructure in the most secure and reliable cloud, Amazon Web Services. AWS has an unmatched portfolio of cloud services that Locus fully utilizes to the benefit of their customers.
Overall, I think that the mishaps related to the IowaReporterApp show just how easy it is for a data collection and management application to fail if not properly implemented and ran by those with years of practical expertise. Subverted data quality will always be extremely costly to your organization, both financially and otherwise, and should be avoided unequivocally.
Locus Technologies was founded in 1997. Locus’ environmental data management software currently handles over a half billion sensitive records taken from over one million unique locations and is used hundreds of organizations including the government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Aaron Edwards received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from UNC Asheville and is Marketing Associate for Locus Technologies. He is an active voter, and is unaffiliated with any political party.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 10 February 2020 —
Locus Technologies, leading provider of environmental management and EHS software, was awarded a 14th consecutive award from Environmental Business Journal (EBJ) for growth and innovation in the field of Information Technology.
EBJ is a business research publication providing strategic business intelligence to the environmental industry. Locus received the 2019 EBJ Award for Information Technology by expanding their software and services.
Among the key drivers for Locus in 2019 was the growth of key software applications for waste and sustainability, as well as the introduction of their facilities management app. Locus software also now further integrates with EPA compliance systems like CMDP, eManifest, and eGGRT. Finally, in terms of services, Locus achieved over 500 GHG verifications under the California AB32 program, being the first company to do so. They were also among the first independent bodies to become certified for the new California Low Carbon Fuel Standard verification.
“We would like to express our gratitude for receiving the EBJ Information Technology award for another year. We look forward to providing our customers with cutting-edge software and services as we seek to improve in the areas of artificial intelligence, IoT integration, and blockchain technology,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus Technologies.
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.
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]
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.
In this infographic, we have outlined a few of the ways EHS programs benefit from having an AWS-hosted solution. Locus customers recently received these benefits as a result of moving our entire infrastructure to Amazon Web Services—the world’s leading cloud. Learn more about the move to AWS.
With data and information streaming from devices like fire hydrants, there is little benefit from raw data, unless a company owning the data has a way to integrate the data into its record system and pair it with regulatory databases and GIS. That is where the advancement in SaaS tools and data sources mashups has helped set the stage for AI as a growing need.
Humans are not very good at analyzing large datasets. This is particularly true with data at the planetary level that are now growing exponentially to understand causes and fight climate change. Faced with a proliferation of new regulations and pressure to make their companies “sustainable” EHS departments keep adding more and more compliance officers, managers, and outside consultants, instead of investing in technology that can help them. Soon, they will be turning to AI technology to stay on top of the ever-changing regulatory landscape.
AI, in addition to being faster and more accurate, should make compliance easier. Companies spend too much time and effort on the comprehensive quarterly or annual reporting—only to have to duplicate the work for the next reporting period. The integrated approach, aided by AI, will automate these repetitive tasks and make it easier than just having separate analyses performed on every silo of information before having a conversation with regulators.
In summary, whether it is being used to help with GHG emissions monitoring and reporting, water quality management, waste management, incident management, or other general compliance functions, AI can improve efficiency, weed out false-positive results, cut costs and make better use of managers’ time and company resources.
Another advantage of AI, assuming it is deployed properly, concerns its inherent neutrality on data evaluation and decision making. Time and time again we read in the papers about psychological studies and surveys that show people on opposite sides of a question or topic cannot even agree on the “facts.” It should not be surprising then to find that EHS managers and engineers are often limited by their biases. As noted in the recent best-seller book by Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics laureate Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” when making decisions, they frequently see what they want, ignore probabilities, and minimize risks that uproot their hopes. Even worse, they are often confident even when they are wrong. Algorithms with AI built-in are more likely to detect our errors than we are. AI-driven intelligent databases are now becoming powerful enough to help us reduce human biases from our decision-making. For that reason, large datasets, applied analytics, and advanced charting and data visualization tools, will soon be driving daily EHS decisions.
In the past, companies almost exclusively relied upon on-premise software (or single-tenant cloud software, which is not much different from on-premise). Barriers were strewn everywhere. Legacy systems did not talk to one another, as few of the systems interfaced with one another. Getting data into third-party apps usually required the information to be first exported in a prescribed format, then imported to a third-party app for further processing and analysis. Sometimes data was duplicated across multiple systems and apps to avoid the headache of moving data from one to another. As the world moves to the multi-tenant SaaS cloud, all this is now changing. Customers are now being given the opportunity to analyze not just their company’s data, but data from other companies and different but potentially related and coupled categories via mashups. As customers are doing so, interesting patterns are beginning to emerge.
The emergence of artificial intelligence is a game-changer for enterprise EHS and content management because it can deliver business insights at scale and make EHS compliance more productive. There are numerous advantages when you combine the leading multi-tenant EHS software with AI:
We are seeing in the most recent NAEM white paper, Why Companies Replace Their EHS&S Software Systems, that people want the ability to integrate with other systems as a top priority. Once the ability to share/consolidate data is available, AI is not far behind in the next generation of EHS/Water Quality software.
This concludes the four-part blog series on Big Data, IoT, AI, and multi-tenancy. We look forward to feedback on our ideas and are interested in hearing where others see the future of AI in EHS software – contact us for more discussion or ideas! Read the full Series: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 23 July 2019 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the market leader in multi-tenant SaaS water quality, environmental compliance, and sustainability management, today announced that it is going all-in on Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), moving its entire infrastructure to the world’s leading cloud. By moving its flagship product EIM (Environmental Information Management) to AWS this month, Locus will complete its transition to AWS. Locus previously moved its Locus Platform (LP) to AWS in 2018.
EIM is the world’s leading water quality management software used by many Fortune 500 companies, water utilities, and the US Government since 1999. Among its many features, EIM delivers real-time tools to ensure that water utilities deliver clean water to consumers’ taps and don’t discharge contaminated wastewater above allowable limits to groundwater or surface water bodies like streams, lakes, or oceans.
EIM generates big data, and with over 500 million analytical records at over 1.3 million locations worldwide, it is one of the largest centralized, multi-tenant water quality management SaaS systems in the world. With anticipated growth in double digits stemming from the addition of streaming data from sensors and many IoT monitoring devices, Locus needed to have a highly scalable architecture for its software hosting. The unmatched performance and scalability of AWS’s offerings are just the right match for powering Locus’ SaaS.
Because of the scope of its applications, Locus is expecting to leverage the breadth and depth of AWS’s services (including its database systems, serverless architecture, IoT streaming, blockchain, machine learning, and analytics) to automate and enhance the on-demand EHS compliance, sustainability, facility, water, energy, and GHG management tools that Locus’ software provides to its customers.
Running on AWS’s fault-tolerant and highly performant infrastructure will help support Locus’s everyday business, and will scale easily for peak periods, where reporting demand such as GHG calculation engine or significant emissions incidents like spills can skyrocket scalability demand.
By leveraging Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) and AWS Lambda, Locus is migrating to a microservices architecture to create more than 150 microservices that independently scale workloads while reducing complexity in the cloud, thereby enhancing every element of the customer cloud experience. Locus built a data lake on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and will leverage Amazon Redshift to analyze the vast amount of data it is storing in the cloud, delivering insights and predictive analytics that uncover chemicals trending patterns and predict future emissions releases at various locations.
Locus intends to leverage AWS IoT services and Amazon Managed Blockchain by building a new native integration to help businesses generate value from the millions of events generated by connected devices such as real-time environmental monitoring sensors and environmental treatment systems controls. AWS IoT is a set of cloud services that let connected devices easily and securely interact with cloud applications like EIM and Locus Platform and other devices. Locus IoT Cloud on AWS allows customers to experience real-time emissions monitoring and management across all their connected sensors and devices. And for customers who want to allow multiple parties to transact (e.g. GHG trading) without a trusted central authority, AWS provides a fully managed, scalable blockchain service. Amazon Managed Blockchain is a fully managed service makes it easy to setup, deploy, and manage scalable blockchain networks that Locus intends to use for emissions management and trading.
For example, a water utility company that maintains thousands of IoT-enabled sensors for water flow, pressure, pH, or other water quality measuring devices across their dispersed facilities and pipeline networks will be able to use Locus IoT on AWS to ingest and manage the data generated by those sensors and devices, and interpret it in real time. By combining water sensor data with regulatory databases, water utility companies will be able to automatically create an emergency shutdown if chemical or other exceedances or device faults are detected and as such, will be better prepared to serve their customers and environment.
By combining the powerful, actionable intelligence in EIM and rapid responsiveness through Locus Platform with the scalability and fast-query performance of AWS, customers will be able to analyze large datasets seamlessly on arrival in real time. This will allow Locus’ customers to explore information quickly, find insights, and take actions from a greater variety and volume of data—all without investing the significant time and resources required to administer a self-managed on-premises data warehouse.
“After 22 years in business, and after evaluating AWS for a year with our Locus Platform, we decided to switch and continue all our business on AWS. We are taking advantage of their extensive computing power, depth and breadth of services and expertise to develop an effective cloud infrastructure to support our growing business and goal of saving the planet Earth by providing and managing factual information on emissions management, all the while reducing operational costs of Locus’ customers,” said Neno Duplan CEO of Locus. “By operating on AWS, we can scale and innovate quickly to provide new features and improvements to our services – such as blockchain-based emissions management – and deliver exceptional scalability for our enterprise customers. With AWS, we don’t have to focus on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing our infrastructure, and can concentrate instead on developing and improving apps and services.”
“By organizing and analyzing environmental, sustainability, and water quality information in the cloud, Locus is helping organizations to understand the impact of climate change on drinking water,” said Mike Clayville, Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Sales at AWS. “AWS’s unmatched portfolio of cloud services, proven operational expertise, and unmatched reliability will help Locus to further automate environmental compliance for companies ranging from local water utilities to multinational manufacturing corporations, to federal government research agencies. ”By choosing to go all-in on AWS, Locus is able to innovate and expand globally, developing new solutions that will leverage comprehensive analytics and machine learning services to gain deeper insights and forecast sustainability metrics that will help deliver clean drinking water to consumers around the world.”