Data at the service of transformation and innovation ??
Data plays an essential and versatile role in many aspects of our modern society. Whether it is reducing the environmental impact of data centers, managing "dark data" within the revolution of data storage, or preventing forest fires, the applications of data are vast and crucial.
This Agility Effect Newsletter edition is dedicated to: Data
Using data to promote biosphere reserves in Portugal??
Biosphere reserves are extremely important sites due to their high ecological, cultural, economic and social value. With support from UNESCO, Axians Portugal has designed a new digital platform to highlight the value of Portugal’s 12 biosphere reserves.
The Reservas de Biosfera Portugal digital platform includes a Web Portal that provides an overview of the project commitment, the Portuguese Biospheres, its communities, history, natural and cultural heritage. Cloud infrastructure hosts all the information and data collected from the sites and makes them available in more than 20 interactive dashboards packed with 350 indicators, along with two interactive maps highlighting the reserves’ cultural and natural heritage.
In total, around 20 Axians employees worked on this assignment to define the needs, performance indicators and identity for each reserve, while simultaneously creating a shared identity. The result was certainly convincing, not least to the Portuguese government, which decided to provide long-term financial support for the project.
What should be done with dark data?
Billions of information assets lie dormant on servers and in data centres. The financial and environmental cost of this so-called “dark data” has become a problem that can no longer be ignored.
According to a Veritas study, dark data were responsible in 2020 for the emission of 6.4 million tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of the carbon footprint of a car travelling 575,000 times around the world.
The explosion in vulnerabilities caused by large amounts of data, which could threaten the security of business information systems.
What solutions are available?
Training teams in these issues, carrying out regular audits to identify and eliminate dark data, mapping and creating processing records of personal data to monitor the asset life cycle are all solutions that can help. This kind of work can be optimised by artificial intelligence (AI). Furthermore, AI may be an attractive tool for unlocking the value of dark data.
“To do this, you should use your needs as a starting point, rather than the data. And establish a data management policy that is shared by everyone in the business,” recommends Cor Bonda, Data & Analytics Lead consultant at Axians NL. He adds however that, “first and foremost, you should focus on generating less data; then you have less dark data.”
How can data be used in public policy? ??
Data can be very powerful in helping to develop and implement public policies in a variety of areas, such as risk prevention, water management and sea freight.
Smart data can power new services able to facilitate and improve people’s lives, in particular by helping to implement public policies.
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Here are examples illustrating this approach by Axians (the ICT brand of VINCI Energies):
Undeniably, data represents a major opportunity for local authorities and public institutions in general. The potential scope of application is enormous. Nevertheless, using data to steer public policies means a specific method must be followed to ensure the quality of data and the decisions that are made, without overlooking the ethical considerations of such an approach.
La Rochelle is using data to drive its carbon-neutral strategy
Net zero emissions by 2040: this ambitious project for the city of La Rochelle, on France’s Atlantic coast, is based on the Terreze data platform, a unique package with a technical core developed by Citeos .
The platform aims to fulfil three major objectives:
How data helps to avoid wildfires
To help prevent wildfires started by powerlines, Axians Portugal collaborated with a Distribution System Operator – DSO to develop a very-high-precision system to detect and eliminate highly resistive short circuits.
Axians’ work was to complement existing residual current protection systems installed at substations with an additional system capable of picking up the kind of described issue and disconnect the line where the fault is located.
How does it work?
“Two algorithms designed by the DSO were implemented to deal with two types of phenomena: scenarios occurring as a result of permanent contact with tree branches and scenarios occurring as a result of intermittent contact. Thanks to a simple web-based man-machine interface, the system configuration can be tailored to any type of substation, to the number of medium-voltage lines, etc. Then, a central database stores the information collected from each substation to assess the algorithm’s performance and enable improvements going forward.” says Luís Pinto Pereira, Business Unit Manager at Axians .
??Discover 4 solutions to reduce the environmental impact of data centers in the video??
Discover our playlist of animations related to the environmental transition.
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