Blockchain and Tuna Traceability
February 8th, 2018
Via The Conversation, a look at how blockchain is strengthening tuna traceability to combat illegal fishing:
In a significant development for global fisheries, blockchain technology is now being used to improve tuna traceability to help stop illegal and unsustainable fishing practices in the Pacific Islands tuna industry.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand, in partnership with US-based tech innovator ConsenSys, tech implementer TraSeable and tuna fishing and processing company Sea Quest Fiji Ltd, has just launched a pilot project in the Pacific Islands tuna industry that will use blockchain technology to track the journey of tuna from “bait to plate”.
The aim is to help stop illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and human rights abuses in the tuna industry. These have included reports of corruption, illegal trafficking and human slavery on tuna fishing boats.
It is hoped the use of blockchain technology will strengthen transparency and enable full traceability, thereby countering significant threats to licensing revenue and crew working conditions and safety, and broader impacts on the environment.
Blockchain is evolving beyond Bitcoin
Blockchain technology is rapidly evolving beyond Bitcoin. Emerging applications are geared to improve business in many ways – including supply-chain transparency for all kinds of products.
A blockchain is a digital ledger that is distributed, decentralised, verifiable and irreversible. It can be used to record transactions of almost anything of value.
Essentially, it is a shared (not copied) database that everyone in the network can see and update. This system provides multiple benefits for supply chains, including high levels of transparency. This is because everyone in the network can see and verify the ledger, and no individual can alter or delete the history of transactions.
For consumers, this means you will be able to scan a code on an item you want to buy and find out exactly where it has been before landing in your hands. It will be easy to answer those tricky questions about whether or not an item – such as a fish – is sustainable, ethical or legal.
Using blockchain to trace tuna
The WWF pilot project will use a combination of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, quick response (QR) code tags and scanning devices to collect information about the journey of a tuna at various points along the supply chain. While this use of technology is not newfor supply-chain tracking, the exciting part is that the collected information will then be recorded using blockchain technology.
Tracking will start as soon as the tuna is caught. Once a fish is landed, it will be attached with a reusable RFID tag on the vessel. Devices fitted on the vessel, at the dock and in the processing factory will then detect the tags and automatically upload information to the blockchain.
Once the fish has been processed, the reusable RFID tag will be switched for a cheaper QR code tag, which will be attached to the product packaging. The unique QR code will be linked to the blockchain record associated with the particular fish and its original RFID tag. The QR code tag will be used to trace the rest of the journey of the fish to the consumer.
At the moment, linking tags is not difficult because the project is focusing on whole round exports – that is, the whole fresh fish minus head, gills and guts. It gets a little more complicated when the fish is cut up into loins, steaks, cubes and cans, but the project team is now able to link the QR code tags on the packages of the processed fish with the record of the original fish on the blockchain.
While it may be possible to use RFID tags throughout the whole process, the expense of these tags could prohibit smaller operators in the fishing industry from participating in the scheme if it expands. There is also potential to use near field communicator (NFC) devices to track the fish all the way to the consumer in the future.
Bringing much-needed transparency to the industry
While this use of the blockchain is the first of its kind for the Pacific Islands region, it is not a world first. A company called Provenence and the International Pole and Line Association (IPLA) has already completed a successful pilot project tracing products from Indonesian tuna fisheries to consumers in the UK.
Provenance is also working on using blockchain to track a range of other physical things – including cotton, fashion, coffee and organically farmed food products. However, the potential of blockchain goes further. For example, Kodak recently launched its own cryptocurrency to help photographers track and protect their digital intellectual property.
Blockchain technology is just starting to change the way business is done. If it delivers on its promise of supply-chain transparency, it will be a great tool to help ensure that industries – including the tuna industry – are doing the right thing.
This will give consumers more information on which to base their purchasing decisions. For the global tuna industry, which has historically struggled with illegal and environmentally dubious fishing practices, this could be a turning point as visionary fishing companies demonstrate true stewardship and begin to open up the industry to full transparency.
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Read More »Sensors Detect Shooting; Help Authorities Catch Elephant Poachers
June 19th, 2017
Via Vanderbilt University, a report on the use of ballistic shockwave sensors to help combat poaching:
Kenyan elephants will get more protection from poachers thanks to new Vanderbilt University technology embedded in their tracking collars — ballistic shockwave sensors that send coordinates to authorities immediately after detecting gunshots.
The new system is the first use of shockwave detection technology in the intensified push to thwart illegal trafficking and save endangered African elephants.
Dubbed WIPER, the project is a joint effort between Vanderbilt computer engineering faculty and Colorado State University, which has used GPS in tracking collars for years to study and protect elephants, slaughtered by the thousands for their ivory tusks.
Elephant poachers routinely use devices to muzzle the sound from their high-powered weapons, but the blast also produces an acoustic shockwave, which cannot be suppressed. WIPER technology detects that a bullet flew by a protected elephant and sends an alarm with its location.
The slaughter of elephants and other iconic African animals is fueled by rising demand for ivory in parts of the Far East. As demand increases, prices skyrocket and make illegal trafficking a lucrative, if risky, option. Save the Elephants estimates that 100,000 elephants were killed for their tusks between 2010 and 2012 alone as poaching efforts migrated from the Central African forests to East Africa.Vanderbilt University Professor of Computer Engineering Akos Ledeczi teamed up with George Wittemyer of Colorado State University, who is also chairman of the scientific board of Save the Elephants. The Kenya-based organization has collared more than 1,000 elephants.
Ledeczi’s expertise is in acoustic shooter detection, localization and classification. He and his team have received major grants from DARPA and built multiple wireless sensor nodes to detect and locate the source of gunfire.
WIPER got a significant boost June 7 with announcement of a $200,000 grant from the Vodafone Americas Foundation. The technology placed second out of eight finalists in Vodafone’s annual Wireless Innovation Project. The awards were announced as part of the 2017 Social Innovation Summit in Chicago.
“Our aim is to make WIPER open-source, freely available to all collar manufacturers, so that it can become a common feature in all wildlife tracking devices,” said Ledeczi, who also has received a Vanderbilt Discover Grant to support the project.
Authorities and wildlife protection groups already use a range of methods to interrupt the ivory trade, including planes and drones that identify poacher blinds and animal carcasses. But such systems have limitations. Lower-cost quad-rotor UAVs (drones) can stay up for only 30 minutes. Fixed-wing UAVs with sophisticated cameras can remain airborne longer but are expensive to buy and operate.
WIPER needs only a few sensor collars per herd, because each one can cover all wildlife within a 50-meter radius.
The Vodafone grant will support prototype development and field-testing for shot detection accuracy and power requirements. Next will be integrating the sensor with an existing commercial GPS collar, manufactured by partner Savannah Tracking of Kenya.
Field studies with collared elephants in Northern Kenya follow. The goal is battery power that lasts 12 months. At that point, the team envisions sensor-enabled collars on 100 elephants each year.
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Read More »Novel Use Of Satnav Saves Precious Water
May 17th, 2017
Via Seed Daily, a look at an innovative use of satellite navigation re: water conservation:
Water conservation is a growing concern globally, and particularly for farmers in the USA, where decades of irrigating huge fields has depleted vital resources of fresh surface water and groundwater. An ESA spin-off that can help to preserve water supplies while guaranteeing crop irrigation is now undergoing final testing.
The ambitious plan of former ESA employee Javier Marti is to tackle irrigation overuse, based on a concept developed at the agency’s technology centre in the Netherlands: using reflected satellite navigation signals for remotely sensing the Earth’s surface.
Lying under eight states in the central US, the vast Ogallala aquifer supplies almost a third of the ground water for crop irrigation in the country – but a large portion of the aquifer, particularly in the states of New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, could dry up within a generation or two if no action is taken.
Two thirds of the aquifer’s water lies under Nebraska, making the state a focus for testing the approach that Javier’s company Divirod has developed.
Over the coming months, several farms will regulate and optimise their irrigation using the new technique to reduce water consumption.
“Our system compares reflected and direct satnav signals to reveal the moisture content of soil and crops,” explained Javier, Divirod’s CEO.
“We anticipate our system could save farmers around 30% in operating costs in terms of both water and energy. Crop yields depend on many factors, but we estimate we could also improve yields by 10-12%.”
Using satnav signals for remote sensing
Javier worked with ESA engineer Manuel Martin-Neira on the Agency’s SMOS soil moisture and ocean salinity satellite. Here, he got the idea of using reflected satnav signals from a project proposed by Manuel for remote sensing. Manuel proposed using the microwave signals to measure terrestrial features such as the topography of oceans.
“Satellites carrying altimeters that use radar can only measure along the line of flight, whereas I realised that using reflected satnav signals would let us take measurements from several different points,” explained Manuel.
Spin-off from space
“Javier and Manuel’s work resulted in three ESA patents for using reflected satnav signals, a breakthrough now available for developing new terrestrial applications,” said ESA Technology Transfer Programme officer Mercedes Sanchez Alvarez.
“It’s great to see that Javier has taken the same signal approach and used it in another manner to develop a practical system for ground measurements of surface soil moisture content, water levels in reservoirs, snowpack and wetlands, among other applications.”
Manuel added, “Although the principles of how SMOS measures soil moisture are different from the Divirod approach, both techniques provide essentially the same thing.
“But what is nice here is that satellite navigation itself is the focus of much development, so basing a soil moisture measurement system on it should enable cost-effective results.”
Javier explained that the key is how the satnav signals are processed. “Using satnav for remote sensing is not unique, but we have developed software that lets us measure variations across a huge field down to a resolution of around 5×5 m or less, using only one sensor on a pole in the centre of the field.
“For some applications we could reduce this resolution to below a square metre in the future.”
This detailed coverage can be integrated into irrigation systems so that water is delivered precisely to different areas across each field as required.
Sensors can also be built into the industrial centre pivot irrigation systems that are widely used across the USA and combined with machine learning to create a self-contained, closed-loop scheme.
Better cultivation in Nebraska
“I’m really excited about the prospect of using the Divirod technology to refine how we use water on our farm,” said Roric Paulman, owner of Paulman Farms in Nebraska, one of the initial trial sites.
“We’re sited in a water restriction management area now. Nebraska legislation recognises that the surface water and groundwater needs in the future are important to the sustainability of the aquifer.”
The alternative methods of assessing soil moisture are physical probes and satellite images. However, a probe measures only the value at one point, and extrapolating from that can be complicated by the different soil types, slopes and varying ground elevation – even across a single field.
“The problems with satellite imagery are not only resolution and cost, but also the time it takes to gather the data and translate it into a setting for the irrigation tool. This can take days, but on a farm we’re working in real time,” added Roric.
Towards efficient water use
Divirod is carrying out sensor tests at the University of Nebraska’s Lincoln Experiment Station to confirm the sensor measurements. It will also be one of the technologies investigated by the Ogallala Water Coordinated Agriculture Project, which may involve thousands of sensors.
Although agriculture is a focus for Divirod, the company is already exploring other applications. From May, sensors will be tested at two sites in Boulder, Colorado, for their potential for moderating water usage in municipal landscapes. There has also been interest from the Middle East. A provisional patent has been filed and more could follow.
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Read More »A Splash of River Water Now Reveals the DNA of All Its Creatures
March 10th, 2017
Via Yale’s e360, an interesting look at how quick and inexpensive DNA sampling of a river, stream, or lake can now divulge what fish or other animals live there, and how this rapidly growing environmental DNA, or eDNA, technology is proving to be a game-changing conservation tool:
A U.S. Forest Service technician heads out to the Blackfoot River in western Montana and pumps water through a small filter, five liters every time she stops. In a single day, she gathers dozens of samples, bringing back to the lab each of the fine mesh filters that the river water passed through.
The filters contain DNA for species — whether brook trout, stone flies, wood ducks, or river otters — that have swum in that stream in the last day or two, up to a kilometer above the sample site. Every insect, fish, or animal continually sloughs off bits of its DNA — in its feces or from its skin — and just a single cell of the invisible, free-floating genetic material can tell researchers which species are present in a river or other water body.
Environmental DNA, or eDNA, is at the center of a brand new kind of fish and wildlife biology, and it is such a powerful tool that it’s transforming the field. eDNA was first used to detect invasive bullfrogs in France a decade ago. It was used in North America for the first time in 2009 and 2010 to detect invasive Asian carp in and around the Great Lakes. Since then, its use has grown exponentially, primarily in marine and freshwater environments.
“You can’t manage a species if you don’t know where it is — even 80-pound Asian carp, because you can’t see them underwater,” said Cornell University biologist David Lodge, who participated in the Asian carp study. “So eDNA is particularly powerful in aquatic systems.”
The DNA is so easy and inexpensive to gather and assay — $50 to $150 to test each sample — that the U.S. Forest Service has launched a project to collect DNA from all rivers and streams across the western U.S. to create an Aquatic Environmental DNA Atlas.
“Environmental DNA is turning out to be an amazing tool in allowing us to detect the distribution of species, a distribution that has been invisible to us in the past,” said Michael K. Schwartz, director of the Forest Service’s National Genomics Center for Wildlife and Fish Conservation in Missoula, Montana. “It has remarkable efficiency.”
The U.S. Forest Service has launched a project to collect DNA from all rivers and streams across the western U.S.Experts say use of the technology is in its early stages and that as it evolves it will become even more powerful, providing an even deeper look into the genetics of aquatic ecosystems, including ocean environments.
The next step in the evolution of the technology would be to estimate the abundance of a species in a river or other water body based on the quantity of DNA found in samples. “That is going to continue to be a research frontier,” said Lodge.
Scientists say that eDNA can be used not only to detect the presence of invasive species in a river, lake, or ocean, but also to help reintroduce native species, to study genetic diversity among fish stocks, and to better manage commercial and endangered species.
Until now, the primary way to conduct distribution studies was to physically see, count, and describe species, a time-consuming process that is expensive and often hit-or-miss. That leaves huge gaps in the knowledge of where species are, which often confounds species management.
One of the best examples of the transformative nature of eDNA is in assessing the distribution of bull trout across its entire range. Bull trout are a threatened species in the U.S. Northwest, and their habitat is declining because of deteriorating water quality and warming water temperatures. Cold water is essential to their spawning.
By knowing where the fish live, managers can direct funding for protecting and restoring riparian habitat. Until recently, though, the only way to find and count bull trout was to do an electro-shocking census. That means a biologist would take equipment to the river to shock fish in the water and count them as they float, stunned, to the surface. That technique is time-consuming, not always permitted, and can survey only a fairly small area with each census.
With eDNA, a single sample can tell which species have been in a river a kilometer upstream from the sample site within the last 24 to 40 hours — that’s how long the DNA lasts in the water. Tests with caged fish have shown that just three fish in a river can give a 100 percent detection rate, and one fish 85 percent.
The range-wide bull trout study, conducted by the Forest Service, first looked at the temperature of streams that fit bull trout requirements. Then eDNA samples were taken to detect the trout’s presence in those reaches. “We’ve been able to detect bull trout in streams in a matter of days that have taken some of our colleagues years to confirm,” says Schwartz. And there were surprises. “In a couple of locations where bull trout were not supposed to be, we have multiple detections throughout the drainage,” Schwartz says.
eDNA technology is being used in other parts of the world as well.
In the Dinaric Alps, a mountain range that runs through Croatia and Slovenia, there’s a curious creature called the olm — a blind, flesh-colored salamander also known as a baby dragon — that lives its entire life underground. “They are a symbol of our country, but are still as mysterious as they were a hundred years ago,” Peter Trontelj of the Department of Biology at the Ljubljana Faculty of Biotechnology told an English-language news site. The only way to know where they lived was to dive into a cave and find them or to see them washed out of a cave after a heavy rain. But after testing for eDNA, biologists confirmed their presence in 10 caves where they were known to exist, and discovered new populations in five others.
In Japan last year, scientists found that eDNA sampling gave them a rough “snapshot” of the distribution and biomass of fish species in a bay in the Sea of Japan.
eDNA assessment has also become a new, powerful weapon in the fight against invasive species.
The first published study of the use of eDNA for conservation purposes was in 2008 in France. The American bullfrog has become an invasive species in France and around the world; not only does it displace native species, but the bullfrog also carries the virulent amphibian killer fungus, chytrid. Early detection of bullfrogs can make a big difference in the ease of eradicating them, but they are hard to find. Calling the frogs only locates a small portion of the population – and even then the census needs to be done at night and in certain weather conditions. With eDNA, French researchers were able to easily confirm the bullfrog’s presence in some ponds and target those for removal.
The identification of fugitive DNA is also playing a role in the detection and eradication of invasive fish, a growing problem. Asian carp, a voracious plankton eater, would pose a huge threat to the ecology of the Great Lakes if they become established there, since they eat so much plankton they starve young fish of other species. While a few have been detected, biologists are monitoring rivers and canals that feed the lakes for early signs of more invaders.
In the western U.S., one target of eDNA searches has been brook trout, an interloper from the East that outcompetes native species. In one eradication scenario, managers would capture native fish and then use poison to kill the brook trout, so that native species could be re-introduced. If biologists find brook trout DNA after poisoning a river, they could go back in and electrofish to see where the stragglers may be hiding.
“Sometimes they have detected one or two or three fish finding refuge in a side channel,” said Schwartz. “In one case they found a dead brook trout under a rock that didn’t flush out of the system.”
That’s one of the drawbacks of the technology — there’s no way to tell if the DNA of an invasive species is dead or alive. A great deal of time and effort could be spent trying to find an exotic carp, for example, that was already dead.
‘Any group of students can collect samples in lakes, rivers, and ponds,’ says one researcher.
The ease and low cost of collecting samples has enabled widespread use of the powerful technique and eDNA can be gathered by just about anyone. It would be prohibitive to test all of New York state’s 7,600 lakes and 70,000 miles of rivers and streams for invasive species. So researchers at Cornell University send detection kits to schools across New York as a citizen science project. Students gather water samples as part of their science class and ship the filters to the university. When the results are returned, the students enter them in a database.
“Any group of students can collect samples in lakes, rivers, and ponds,” said Donna Cassidy-Hanley, a senior research associate at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. “Once the data is plotted, the people doing the eradication work can see where the species has spread.”
Students recently found DNA from the round goby, an aggressive invasive fish, and confirmed its presence in Oneida Lake in the Finger Lakes, where it was not known to exist. “It sets the stage for corrective action,” Cassidy-Hanley said.
As new techniques evolve, a single water sample will be sufficient to detect which communities of organisms exist in a waterway or in the ocean. “In the future,” write Phillip Francis Thomsen and Eske Willerslev, two Danish experts from the Center for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, “we expect the eDNA approaches to move from single-marker analysis of species or communities to meta-genomic surveys of entire ecosystems to predict spatial and temporal biodiversity.” That would greatly enhance conservation efforts.
One of the problems facing conservation biology these days is that not all populations within a species have the same DNA. Some populations of bull trout might be better adapted to surviving in warmer water, for example, or even adapted to specific drainages. If the DNA for those adaptations are known — and in most cases they aren’t yet — then finding certain specially adapted populations to be relocated or protected will be a lot quicker and easier with eDNA.
“This technique will help solve a lot of the problems of conservation across broad scales,” said Schwartz.
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Read More »The Digital Ocean: Our Next Information Frontier
February 17th, 2017
Via Scientific American, interesting commentary on the need for an information superhighway of the seas:
When the term Information Highway was coined, little did the majority of the world realize the impact this concept and the resulting Internet Superhighway would have on humanity. In 1994, MIT described the concept this way: “The information superhighway brings together millions of individuals who could exchange information with one another.” Spring forward to today. You can simply “Google” anything and receive an instantaneous response to gain immediate knowledge. This is our expectation—immediate access to data anywhere in the world, day or night.
In reality, instant access to data is only true for less than one quarter of our planet. For the remaining three quarters, the ocean, there is a huge information infrastructure gap, with limited to no real time access to data.
Why is this? On land, we have sensors everywhere—weather sensors to provide neighborhood weather reports, traffic sensors to report on road conditions, and the list goes on. There are sensors throughout your home for better home management and security—controlled right from your smartphone. In manufacturing plants, sensors are prevalent to optimize the supply chain and increase productivity. Many more examples exist in healthcare, entertainment, military, oil & gas, and in thousands of other industries. The Digital Revolution has certainly arrived, yet not to our oceans.
Why does this matter? Who needs instant access to information in the middle of the ocean? The answer is we all do. The world’s economies are tightly linked to the oceans. Over 90 percent of global trade is carried by ships with goods worth over $4 trillion. Fishery net export revenues are over $42B, and offshore energy exploration exceeds $394B. To help solve the global issues of dwindling fisheries/seafood supplies, energy shortages, and climate change we must depend on advancements in technologies, and the ability to understand the ocean, which will require an exponential growth and deployment of sensors and a global communications infrastructure to help monitor and manage the ocean. These economic forces, coupled to the sustainable management of our ocean environment, are key drivers of the Blue Economy. The common denominator for this growth is the need for pervasive real time data to understand what’s going on in our ocean and in turn, our planet
Despite a growing awareness of our economic dependence on our Oceans, the majority of the world does not realize its importance or our dependence for life’s basic needs (oxygen, food, weather). Below are statistics that underscore this importance and co-dependence:
- The U.S. GDP is heavily influenced by U.S. Maritime transportation with over 95 percent of U.S. foreign trade, nearly 3 million jobs (1 in 50), dependent on maritime commerce (Source: CIT Maritime Fast Facts in Five, 2016).
- Four fifths of the world’s merchandise trade is seaborne.
- 99 percent of all international data (calls, text messages, financial transactions) travel through undersea cables.
- In Europe alone, the gross estimated incremental value of the Blue Economy is $500 Billion per year.
- Fish provide more than 3.1 billion people with almost 20 percent of their intake of animal protein.
A maritime digital revolution
Today, our expectation is for instant communication—immediate response to any question. Just ask Google Home or Amazon Echo. We enjoy access to real time information across land, air and space; however, this is not true for our ocean.
This is the glaring gap. Seventy one percent of our planet is ocean. Of this 2/3 of our world, we only know five percent about what exists. Why? Unlike on land, air and space, there are relatively few sensors or devices to collect data below the surface and even fewer ways to communicate. The issue is the World lacks a data collection and communications infrastructure to provide real time communications throughout our ocean.
Without the ability to have pervasive information and information exchange, I submit we will not be able to tackle some of the most challenging issues before us. In 2015, more than 190 world leaders committed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help us all end extreme poverty, fight inequality & injustice, and fix climate change. Of these, number 14 is to conserve and sustainably use the ocean. This is a fundamental requirement, and, if not addressed, will have severe consequences. Just think of the ramifications to the 2.6 billion people who today rely on seafood as their main source of protein?
A vision for a Digital Ocean is emerging. It can be defined as a diverse, networked array of platforms and sensors that enable connectivity across the ocean, to the air above and through the vast ocean depths, providing instant access to ocean information. This vision will take time and collaboration across industry, government, NGOs and Academia. It requires unmanned and manned systems working together to collect exchange and communicate data.
We need to start today to overcome the challenge of networking the ocean. The benefits of such a network are invaluable. Imagine if there were grids of sensors spanning our ocean, connected and networked, that could provide instant information on impending tsunamis, or on water quality to detect oil leaks and possibly prevent a major catastrophe. Think about the intelligence we would gain by using these sensors to conduct long term monitoring of the world’s fish population and how this could help feed those 2.6 billion people. The insights we’d gain from this data would transform business, advance scientific discovery and help safeguard our ocean.
Overcoming business and technology barriers.
Before the Digital Ocean becomes a reality there are obstacles we have to overcome:
- Lack of a pervasive ocean data collection and communications infrastructure. Fundamentally, we need to create the information highway for the ocean. A connected network of systems, manned and unmanned, that can collect data anywhere in the ocean, anytime, and do so sustainably. Today this is not possible. Enabling on-demand, real time ocean information is the goal for the Digital Ocean.
- Sparse number of sensors throughout the ocean. Ironically, there are more sensors in Space than our ocean. Why? The ocean is an extremely dangerous and costly place to operate, especially in the unpredictable deep ocean. The costs, both in dollars and risks to human life, severely limit ocean observation and monitoring. With sensors to collect real time data on climate change, weather, seismic activity, ocean currents, fish migration or other biological or environmental conditions, we can learn what’s really happening beneath the surface. We’ll have the data to measure and then better manage our ocean. This ability to easily and economically deploy data collection sensors throughout our ocean is fundamental to the future of the ocean economy and ocean preservation.
- Renewable energy to fuel long duration systems. For ocean systems, energy is the first constraint that limits how independent, how autonomous, a robot can be. With vast coverage areas and no mid ocean gas stations or electric hook-ups, the need for systems that are not dependent on refueling and those operating on renewable energy sources is critical to long duration operations.
- Extreme reliability for ocean operations. As noted, the ocean is unpredictable and harsh. In addition to extreme wave, wind, current, temperature changes and mid ocean hurricanes, salt-water corrosion is another unique challenge that must be overcome. Every component and every aspect of the integrated system requires extreme reliability design and testing. It requires the same or greater testing that is done for space flights, as for both, repair calls are slow and costly.
- Reducing the cost and risk of ocean operations. The current acquisition, maintenance and operational costs for ocean operations are prohibitive for most businesses. With the advent of unmanned systems, the risks and high costs associated with manned ocean operations (i.e. ships) are greatly reduced. We need to let the unmanned systems tackle the dull, dangerous and dirty jobs to safeguard human life and improve overall operational efficiency.
The ocean is data rich, yet without an easy, reliable, and cost effective communications infrastructure it remains untapped. The good news is we’re not starting from scratch. Commercially available technologies, both manned and unmanned, are available and working today, but more development is needed. Creating the Digital Ocean will require an entire ecosystem of partners working together toward a common objective – connectivity anywhere on or in the planet’s oceans.
Starting now, starting together
Whether it’s international trade, undersea communications, weather, food sources or jobs, our economic future depends on sustaining a healthy global ocean. To do so, we need to reliably collect and communicate information from all parts of the ocean. This requires a renewed dedication to network and communications innovation that fueled the World Wide Web. We can start by collaborating on the Digital Ocean.
The Digital Ocean is a long-term endeavor that is not in place today, yet has seeds around the world. It requires more than technology and building out the fundamental infrastructure. It will require thoughtful and collaborative work on international maritime law and regulations, interoperability and data standards, and security. The good news is that we have the experts today. Our next step is to adopt a shared vision with clear goals and then get started.
The time to get started is now. Our oceans are ailing and need our attention. Without a healthy ocean we cannot realize a healthy ocean economy. This is why I ask you to start thinking now about the role your organization can play in the Digital Ocean. What can we collectively do to overcome the challenges? Looking ahead the opportunities are vast and the stakes are high. Join me to create the Digital Ocean—the next global communications frontier that will serve the Ocean of 2030 and our future generations.
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Read More »Digital Earth: A Resilient World Requires Resilient Data
February 21st, 2016
Via Ensia, some commentary on the need – given the speed at which humans are altering the biosphere – for a digital resilience so as not to miss the opportunities for forecasting detrimental outcomes in time to avoid them. As the article and the underlying research paper note, global data needs will continue to grow, and will be met as the “digital Earth” expands, especially by way of real-time sensors:
If the bad news is that we’re living in a world in which resilience is more critical to survival than ever, the good news is that technology is more than ever providing the tools we need to cultivate resilience. Exciting innovations in digital data collection, analysis and visualization now allow us to track and understand human impacts at global to local scales and identify big-picture patterns and processes in ways never before possible, from the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative, which measures physical, chemical, biological and geological variables throughout the depths of the ocean to theGlobal Earth Observation System of Systems, which provides petabytes of environmental data from space-borne, airborne andin situ sensors.
Indeed, we now find ourselves inhabiting a “Digital Earth” composed of technologies from satellites to wristwatches that monitor, map, model and manage virtually everything around us.
And it’s not just data for data’s sake. The same digital technologies we use to understand how the Earth works are also helping communities in very practical ways. These range from monitoring fire, drought or flooding to mapping the relevant insurance zones for such. They include tracking economic collapse or health epidemics, finding available drinking water, alerting us to temperature and precipitation changes, determining landscape vulnerability for land managers, monitoring air quality, even identifying the suitability of a position on one’s roof for installing solar panels.
The information such programs produce is precisely what we need to be able to cope with global change. But in order to use it to that end, we need to ensure it’s available to those who need it. In other words, we need to make sure the tools that allow us to gather and use this information are resilient, too. To that end, I propose a set of three principles that data generators should subscribe to and governments should adopt.
1. Share more than just data
To be of societal value, digital data must be tagged and analyzed, a practice commonly known as generating “metadata.” It also must be made available in a format that matches the user’s needs. We should not only share data openly, but also facilitate the use of data in a variety of ways. For example, temperature and precipitation data can be used not only to track or predict the effects of climate change but also to calculate how much energy is needed to cool a home or business in a specific region.
In making our data open to application by others, we need to be open about what we are doing with the data — the actual steps taken in an analysis or map preparation (aka “workflows”) — so others can replicate and validate (or improve upon) our work.
We also need to provide use cases — scenarios showing how and why data were used for a particular analysis or map, with an emphasis on a practical, real-world outcome. For example, a use case might tell the story of the correct or most effective way of using a particular workflow (i.e., the actual steps taken in an analysis or preparation of a map from initiation to completion), including how the data may be used in a range of formats, devices and platforms. If the reader of the use case is able to understand what is going on behind the scenes that produced a certain map or output, this will engender trust in the workflow and hence the results
2. Tell stories
Decades of studies in psychology have repeatedly shown how story affects the human mind and influences attitudes, fears, hopes and values. Storytelling is a valuable tool for taking the knowledge developed within academia and transmitting it into mainstream society in ways that resonate and empower action.
Scientists tend to want to explain how the world works by way of copious background information, overview of prior studies, detailed methods, results and discussion before getting to the take-home message. But policy-makers, journalists and the general public want the take-home message first. Telling stories is one way scientists could meet this need.
In the realm of digital data and information, a relatively new medium called the “story map” offers valuable assistance in telling a specific and compelling story. A story map allows scientists to share not only data, but also photos, videos and even sounds, all within the framework of a digital map. Story maps are created with Web map applications that provide the user with sophisticated cartographic functionality that does not require advanced training in cartography or geographic information systems, usually coupled with data needed to tell the story. Users can also leverage their own data (including workflows and use cases) in new ways to inform, educate and inspire decision-makers on a wide variety of issues.
The illustration below shows the opening page of a Smithsonian Institution story map depicting human influence on our planet and innovations that are helping to promote sustainability.
3. Be open to partnerships
Climate science, resilience studies and ecology are squarely in the realm of academia and government agencies, but it’s critical to partner with industry as well. The private sector is often looking to create and share knowledge toward solving environmental challenges in partnership with academia or government. Many companies are entering into a culture of resilience not only as part of their values or worldview, but also because it is good business.
Public–private partnerships are most successful when based on a holistic strategy that addresses specific community needs. For example, in June 2013, President Obama announced the Climate Data Initiative, which encourages innovators from the private sector and the general public to share data on climate change risks and impacts in compelling and useful ways that help citizens, businesses and communities make smart choices in the face of climate change. Similarly, NOAA has created cooperative research and development agreements with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM and the Open Commons Consortium. These industry partners in turn share data with smaller companies such as AccuWeather, Esri (where I work) and PlanetOS to extend the public–private partnership even further. On a smaller scale, the new Research Data Alliance is fostering public-private partnerships to enhance data use, data quality and the adoption of data-sharing approaches and tools.
Communities around the world face increasing challenges from natural and manmade disasters. Whether they face drought or flooding, economic collapse or epidemic, communities need digital information technologies to prepare ahead of time, to operate effectively during events and to recover quickly. For digital technologies to meet this need, they too must be resilient. By sharing workflows and use cases, telling compelling stories, and building private-sector partnerships, we can help ensure that digital resources are able to provide the information we need to effectively respond to challenges wherever and whenever they arise.
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