Digitizing Environmental Data: The Path Toward Efficiency and Nature-Positive Action
This summer, Ecobot CEO Lee Lance spoke with Civil + Structural Engineer Media (C+SE) writer Luke Carothers ahead of the Fall 2024 Innovation issue of the magazine. They discussed how:
Read the C+SE article online: A Continued Push: Digitalization & Environmental Permitting
This interview has been edited for clarity.
C+SE: Three years ago, we talked about the environmental regulatory industry's transition from outdated, paper-based methods to more modern approaches, and its connection to addressing climate change. How has this transition evolved since then? Have there been any major shifts or key moments in the industry, and what are the most significant positive or negative changes you've seen?
Ecobot: The most dramatic development in the past few years is the exponential rise of AI. The transformative promise of AI has made modernization a mandate. We’ve seen the appetite for digital tools increase not only on the corporate level, but on an individual level. The way people find and consume software has shifted toward the enablement of end users to identify solutions on their own, with the goal of making their jobs easier and more effective, and adopting what’s accessible to them. So, we’re seeing more and more individual users seeking out and adopting tools themselves. When there is a groundswell of interest, companies will standardize and benefit from increased efficiency, transparency, and data normalization.
Among government entities and large corporations, there’s a new sense of urgency for digital tools to enhance efficiency and enable climate resilient design for infrastructure projects. In part, this has been reflected in a number of initiatives by the Biden Administration, beginning with legislation like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and those driven by the White House’s Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC) and the White House Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ). The administration has established, firstly, that the need for better infrastructure is both a byproduct of and answer to the climate crisis; and secondly, that the digitization of data, starting with environmental permitting data and processing, is a key opportunity to speed infrastructure projects, build assets that are climate-resilient, and leverage environmental data long-term and at scale. We’ve seen some states already adopt digitized permitting processes, like Virginia with their PEEP program , who have seen enormous improvements to efficiency and transparency in permitting as a result.?
The administration has established, firstly, that the need for better infrastructure is both a byproduct of and answer to the climate crisis; and secondly, that the digitization of data, starting with environmental permitting data and processing, is a key opportunity to speed infrastructure projects, build assets that are climate-resilient, and leverage environmental data long-term and at scale.
We’ve also watched federal environmental regulations change dramatically, and it’s critical that the regulated community remains agile amid the changes. The task of the environmental consultant is to assess land use risk and opportunity for their client, and as regulatory changes occur, it’s more important than ever to equip the client with thorough and sound data and potentially mitigate the risk of future litigation. Technology like Ecobot is enabling the swift and broad collection of data by supporting a range of environmental assessments, data-rich geospatial mapping and photo reports, and more.?
Since we launched in 2019, Ecobot has established an incredibly strong track record of reliability, both as a secure software and as a robust and accurate tool that supports the regulated community. We’ve never had a report rejected by a regulator for an error, we have had only 30 minutes of cumulative platform downtime since January of 2019, and we have an enviable track record on data integrity and security, with no security breaches. We’re in a position to scale this technology from the initial proof point of a handful of environmental surveys into a broad multitool for every aspect of environmental consulting, including assessments, permitting, monitoring, predicting—and leveraging the data collected to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The environmental industry needs better technology to get further faster, and Ecobot is one example alongside other environmental tech companies that can offer immediate efficiency and transparency across an increasingly distributed workforce.
领英推荐
C+SE: Ecobot has a strong track record of efficiently collecting regulatory-driven natural resources data, essential for fields like planning and civil engineering. With the recent infrastructure boom, how has Ecobot influenced its development? Can you share any key projects or use cases where Ecobot’s services were critical in solving major challenges?
E: The industry is still teetering on the edge of that boom. The IIJA and IRA dollars really just began to flow as of the end of last year , and a substantial portion of dollars from these bills are still ahead of us. Ecobot’s most tangible value to our customers working on these large infrastructure projects is efficiency and reliability. We regularly hear from customers that the time they spend generating regulatory reports is halved, thanks to built-in automations, streamlined workflows, and seamless data transmission. And the companies see this benefit, because we’ve focused first on the end-user. When they’re done with fieldwork, they’re done, because we’ve automated nearly everything else they’d have to do to generate a report after a long day in the field. One of my favorite things that I’ve heard from a customer talking about why they like using Ecobot is, “I made it to all my kid’s t-ball games this summer.” The benefits to the consultant create benefits at scale for the company they work for, and they’re greater the bigger the project.?
So, as an example of Ecobot’s impact on a major project, in a panel presentation at last year’s Georgia Environmental Conference , consultants from infrastructure firm Burns & McDonnell described using Ecobot to conduct environmental assessments for their management of Georgia Power’s Grid Investment Program . The program is a multi-year plan to enhance approximately 1,700 miles of transmission lines across the state. Georgia Power’s goal is to avoid sites where there would be environmental impacts, and Ecobot enabled the consultants conducting assessments to quickly identify those areas and plan accordingly, keeping this enormous project moving at a clip.
Ecobot is used by consultants working on linear corridors, like transmission lines, pipelines, road improvements and construction, and on parcels ranging in size from small developments to those that are thousands of acres, like industrial and utility-scale power generation, solar developments , multi-state pipeline projects , environmental restoration projects , and even the occasional spaceport .
C+SE: Previously we discussed the need for further digitization, including georeferenced tools. How has Ecobot evolved in this area? How is Ecobot positioning itself technologically to address the ongoing challenges of climate change?
E: The silver lining of the environmental industry’s historic slowness to adopt technology is that we don’t have a ton of old technology to replace. Instead, we’re able to jump right in and adopt significantly more impactful new technology.
Right now, our customers are about twice as efficient with Ecobot. Our goal is to make them ten times more efficient. And we’ll accomplish this through the use of data and AI. There’s an extreme amount of rework involved throughout data collection and permitting, especially when conducting multiple assessments, where there may be data overlap. We have the opportunity to cut out that rework, and then expand and leverage data to create more strategic and creative value for our customers and their clients.
On a higher level, the importance of amassing anonymized geospatial data and the continual growth of this data repository can’t be understated. The more information we can aggregate across multiple site conditions within an ecosystem, the better we can plan for a climate-resilient future and more sustainable development practices. There’s been a huge emphasis by the UN in recent years to protect biodiversity worldwide , in part because of its massive economic impacts .
The more information we can aggregate across multiple site conditions within an ecosystem, the better we can plan for a climate-resilient future and more sustainable development practices.
Geospatial environmental data can drive policies that promote sustainability while enabling economic growth, and allow firms to plan accordingly and advance their ESG and nature-positive goals. Ecobot customers are collecting this data every day for environmental permits—as of today, we’re approaching 170,000 regulatory reports—check ecobot.com for an up-to-date count. Each of these reports reflects on-site scientific identification of canopy, subcanopy, surface, and subsurface data, like hydrology and soil; and biodiversity data like vegetation and ecosystem habitat details. Together these data allow us to paint a clear picture of an ecosystem and the biodiversity that it supports.?
As a security-first organization, Ecobot’s highest priority is protecting the privacy of our clients’ data and their customers’ data. When this data is aggregated and anonymized, it can be leveraged to make better decisions around sustainability and resilience. Currently scientists only have 7% of the biodiversity data on the planet , and gaps in the data prevent us from using AI to train machine learning models . We’re positioned to help close that gap with this data that is currently an underutilized byproduct of permitting by using it in aggregated, anonymized form. Can you imagine what can be learned from that at a national or planetary scale?