Strategic advice to leverage new technologies
Technology is at the heart of nearly every enterprise, enabling new business models and strategies, and serving as the catalyst to industry convergence. Leveraging the right technology can improve business outcomes, providing intelligence and insights that help you make more informed and accurate decisions. From finding patterns in data through data science, to curating relevant insights with data analytics, to the predictive abilities and innumerable applications of AI, to solving challenging business problems with ML, NLP, and knowledge graphs, technology has brought decision-making to a more intelligent level. Keep pace with the technology trends, opportunities, applications, and real-world use cases that will move your organization closer to its transformation and business goals.
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Cloud-based carbon intelligence platforms can help companies track, measure, and model their CO2 emissions — including providing the ability to integrate and analyze carbon emissions data acquired from across their supply chains — and chart the progress of their overall sustainability initiatives. This Advisor explores some of the new products on the market utilizing distributed ledger technologies to support carbon intelligence platforms.
Discover three steps to optimizing your office and home work environments, learn how to deliver effective data and software solutions, business strategies, and more, in this week's edition of The Cutter Edge!
Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Helen Pukszta explores the use of drones for sustainability. From the critical application of precision agriculture to whimsical light shows, drones not only provide new functionality, they do so with a low carbon footprint. In precision agriculture, we see again that the data collection capability of drones coupled with sophisticated optimization algorithms can help farmers use natural resources more efficiently. In an unusual application that most would not think of, Pukszta goes on to illuminate the unintended environmental consequences of fireworks and the benefits of using drones for light shows.
A Renewal Energy Certificate (REC) is another mechanism for offsetting carbon emissions. As explained by Claudio Lima, RECs are issued to accredited generators of renewable energy. These credits can then be traded in energy markets where consumers looking to offset their own fossil fuel energy consumption can buy the credits. Since a REC is essentially a record of a quasi-observable event (i.e., renewable energy fed into the grid), this data is susceptible to manipulation and transaction errors. Similar to carbon markets, or any market for that matter, lack of credibility can undermine the effectiveness of the market. Lima explains how blockchain can be used to ensure the authenticity of RECs and improve their market credibility.
We continue the trend of the last CBTJ issue with an interview of a top-notch expert whose company is helping to make great strides toward sustainability. Cutter Consortium Fellow Lou Mazzucchelli talks with Carlos Silva of Pachama, a company that uses satellite imagery and ML to measure the carbon captured by forests and how it evolves over time. This measurement allows us to determine whether a carbon credit that is traded on an exchange represents a “real” reduction in emissions. The verifiability and accuracy of such measurements form the foundation for robust carbon markets. Silva explains how the technology works to ensure the integrity of forest carbon credits.
Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant San Murugesan provides a broad overview of the many areas where we can use IoT to improve environmental sustainability, from energy management to food waste reduction. He explains that “the power of IoT lies in its efficiency, accessibility and controllability, and scalability in connecting disparate, distributed devices and appliances.” Many of the applications Murugesan describes rely on sensors to collect data in settings where previously it would have been prohibitively expensive or infeasible. These sensors then feed information to data analytics software that can optimize decisions. His article gives us a sense of how pervasive IoT already is, and how much potential it still has.
The four articles in this companion issue of CBTJ on sustainability explore the ways that technology can be used to monitor and improve the sustainability of a wide range of processes, industrial and otherwise.
There is no better way to socialize and gain traction with business architecture than to deliver results using it. This Advisor explores best practices, tips, and hacks for establishing and socializing business architecture, ensuring it is appreciated and embedded within the fabric of the organization.