Clean Technology Meets Data Science: News and Articles

 We had such a terrific response to our first ever  " Introduction to Machine Learning and Data Science in Water "  course, that we've decided to open it up for registration for the second time. If you're in the water sector, are curious about machine learning and data science and not sure how to get started using it in your work - join our course and we'll give you the tools! This is the second time we're doing a 10-week, cohort-based course and we plan on doing more of them in the future. So, what does our asynchronous, cohort-based course do for you? One of the challenges with completing courses online is that it's so easy to sign up for one, get busy with life and work, fall behind and then give up on finishing the course that you signed up for. Our cohort-based and asynchronous approach helps you overcome that. The course material is online - so you get to complete it and review it when you get the time. However, we also have weekly office hours that ...

  A mid-sized data center consumes around 300,000 gallons of water a day, or about as much as 1,000 U.S. households; About 20% of data centers in the United States already rely on watersheds that are under moderate to high stress from drought and other factors; Operating a data center often requires a tradeoff between water use and energy use; And in a survey of 122 data centers in the United States, only 16% or 20 utilities reported plans for managing water-related risks. As professionals working in the field, what can we do to solve this issue? One aspect is developing and using water models that can identify water risks at different scales - so that we can predict the risk to water supplies under a changing climate. A second is using machine learning to identify and optimize water use between all the stakeholders in the watershed - data centers, farmers, cities, other industries - so that biases and needs are brought out into the open and the key issues identified. A third, of c...

 We're delighted to welcome our first ever cohort to our " Introduction to Machine Learning and Data Science in Water " course. If you're in the water sector, are curious about machine learning and data science and not sure how to get started using it in your work - join our course and we'll give you the tools! This is the first time we're doing a 10-week, cohort-based course and we plan on doing more of them in the future. So, what does our asynchronous, cohort-based course do for you? One of the challenges with completing courses online is that it's so easy to sign up for one, get busy with life and work, fall behind and then give up on finishing the course that you signed up for. Our cohort-based and asynchronous approach helps you overcome that. The course material is online - so you get to complete it and review it when you get the time. However, we also have weekly office hours that are live - so you get to ask your questions to our experts, have th...

Last time we looked at how machine learning can help water utilities manage their maintenance and operations efforts - especially when dealing with hard-to-reach parts of the water system like buried water pipes. Today, let’s talk about how machine learning is being used in developing new technologies and building prototypes for decentralized, small-scale systems. Desalination has been studied and deployed at scale for several years now. As different parts of the planet face increasing water stress, desalination is being evaluated as one of several potential solutions - together with water conservation and recycled water. In the Middle East of course, large-scale desalination plants have been in operation for several decades, with Israel being one of the countries at the forefront of developing and implementing the technology. Large-scale desalination plants have the advantage of scale - you can build a single system and then connect it to your existing water network. Sufficient data a...

When are machine learning and data science useful in the water sector? Are they useful if you have a large system with lots of data? Or are they useful if you’re looking at small-scale, decentralized systems?   The answer, as you might have guessed, is both. The difference is in the type of tools and algorithms being deployed and the results that are being sought - but, in both cases, machine learning and data science provide invaluable help in getting people access to clean, safe drinking water. Let’s take a look at two very different applications of water tech. One is for a water utility that is attempting to improve its systems to ensure that clean, safe water continues to flow to the citizens of the city and the other is for a small, rural community that needs cheap, reliable access to clean water. Interestingly, while the goals and requirements of both these applications are very different, the thread that connects both of them is machine learning. Today, we’ll talk about the ...

If you were thinking about countries and cities that were at the forefront of innovation in the water sector, would Singapore immediately come to mind? Singapore has long been researching and implementing methods to conserve water, to reuse water and to work with citizens and the community on understanding their needs - both now and in the future. In many ways, the challenges that Singapore faces are the challenges of the future - a small city with limited access to natural resources, including water; a high-tech economy that provides its citizens with the comforts and benefits associated with a developed country; and a changing climate that is impacting its ability to deliver those benefits. So, let’s talk about how Singapore is using the latest in data science and machine learning to help solve its water problems! Singapore’s Public Utilities Board (PUB) is the national water agency responsible for “supplying good water, reclaiming used water and taming stormwater”. As an agency, it ...

If there’s one area in clean technology and data science that’s seen tremendous growth in the last three years, it’s the use of robots, drones and satellites to collect data and perform tasks.   Satellite data was used in the early 1970s for applications in clean technology through machine learning and statistics. Back then, LandSat were the earliest satellites and the data were used to understand land use and monitor environmental impacts from space. Of course, today we’ve got a wide range of satellite data available for all kinds of applications - from traditional government sources like the LandSat and Copernicus satellites to commercial satellites launched by companies like Planet.   Similarly, we’ve seen an explosion in the use of robots and drones in different clean technology areas - ranging from ocean monitoring to repairing infrastructure like oil and sewer pipes to maintaining solar arrays and wind turbines to cleaning up plastic pollution to harvesting fruits an...

  Will AI transform water, energy, agriculture, climate and all the other clean tech sectors? Can AI transform these sectors? Some version of these questions always gets asked at any meeting or conference in clean technology. Of course, part of that is because there’s been so much hype around AI and the whole “software is eating the world” interviews that came out a couple of years ago. But part of it is also because these tools are so powerful that professionals working in these sectors can see the potential - but just aren’t sure if it’s applicable to their sector yet. So, let’s start by asking a couple of fundamental questions. Why do we need AI at all? Or any models for that matter? Models are used to understand the world - to estimate the impacts of changes in systems and to try and predict what will happen in the future. Typically, the approaches used in building models can be classified into three broad categories - physical or mechanistic approaches, statistical approaches ...

  One of the most interesting aspects of working in clean technology is the interaction between different sectors in the space - the Food-Energy-Water nexus, for example.   What is the food-energy-water nexus? Well, not being in the Star Trek universe or any other science fiction arena, we’re definitely not talking about black holes of energy where food and water go to die :)! What we are talking about when we talk about the nexus between different clean tech sectors is - how do these sectors interact with each other? How complex are the interactions and can the relationships between them be described? In the case of the energy-water-food nexus, we’re exploring the interactions between the energy, water and food sectors. For example, we need water to grow food and produce energy, but energy is also needed to pump out groundwater and to process food.   Just for fun, let’s take a look at some numbers on the food-energy-water nexus from the UN and FAO. Let’s start with the b...