Clean Technology Meets Data Science: News and Articles

We've been in "building mode" here at Ecoformatics for the last few months and are delighted to announce our new products! First, welcome to our new, redesigned website. We've consolidated all our products and services under a single platform with Teachable to make it easier for our members to access all our content. As a reminder, your existing account for courses and webinars will still work on our new website. Second, our live events will be back starting January!   Our events will continue to be primarily virtual, and we're adding a new networking aspect to all our events. We are looking forward to talking about data science, machine learning and sensors in different clean technology sectors with professionals from around the world! And finally, we’re excited to announce our new products - the WaterTech track and the AgTech track . These are our first tracks where we focus on data science in a particular clean tech sector - specifically the water and wastew...

  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 ...

The last couple of months have been interesting from a climate viewpoint - we’ve seen a record number of climate related disasters around the globe - drought, floods, fires, heat waves…..and it looks like this is probably going to be what our planet will look like in the near future. Add to that the COP26 conference that is scheduled for October 31st - and climate, sustainability and technology are front page news! So, let’s talk about one of the technologies in the news - artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on climate, water, agriculture, energy, forestry, ecosystems and other sectors in clean technology . AI and its subset of tools - machine learning (ML), data science and statistics - are being touted as one of the key technologies in solving the problems facing the planet today. And while these technologies are certainly powerful - applying them effectively to solve problems in clean tech is another issue altogether. AI has been used by scientists in different clean tech se...

When discussing complicated topics like artificial intelligence (AI), it’s often easier to understand the issues in a sector like clean technology by comparing what’s happening in other sectors like manufacturing or healthcare. So, this month, let’s talk about building useful artificial intelligence(AI) tools, the need for expertise in adapting these technologies, and how our experience using AI in other sectors is similar to what we experience in clean technology. Since we’re still in a pandemic, let’s take a look at healthcare and clean technology. To start with, what do these two seemingly very different sectors have to do with each other? Quite a lot, as it happens. First, the environment has a huge impact on public health - think wildfire smoke or poor air quality and the impacts on cardiovascular health and asthma in people. Second, monitoring the environment allows us to better understand the health of communities - for example, monitoring wastewater for SARS-Cov2, the virus cau...

We're in the processes of building a couple of fantastic new offerings that many folks in our community have asked for - so blog posts will be limited for a few months. Our jobs portal will still be updated regularly to make sure that all our members can keep up with what's happening in the sector. We can't wait to share what's happening at our end!

  Every Earth Day we hear from companies around the world about their sustainability efforts - the gallons of water they have saved, the reductions in energy use, the systems they have converted from fossil-fuel to renewable energy, the ecosystems they have restored and, more recently the amount of carbon they have offset. On the face of it, these are amazing and hopeful numbers - the very fact that corporations are paying so much attention to sustainability and the environment is testament to the fact that consumer and citizen pressure is yielding results. In fact, with every successive year, it seems that companies and organizations are able to sequester more carbon, minimize greenhouse gas emissions and thus mitigate climate change.     What allows companies to make these claims - especially with respect to carbon and greenhouse gas emissions? The way that most companies claim these credits is through carbon markets or “cap and trade” programs. In these programs, a com...

  We are excited to partner with our friends   @generalassembly   for Data Week — a   free virtual summit May 17-21   filled with workshops and panel discussions to help you harness data to tell compelling stories and uncover trends!   Click here to check out the schedule & RSVP today!   

  What is climate tech? How much is the market worth - hint it's in trillions of dollars. How has it grown over the last decade? What are the trends driving the adoption of data science, AI and machine learning in the climate science space? What are the jobs like and what skills are required to work at the intersection of data science and climate? Join us for a lively discussion on this topic on March 25th !

  It was an honor and a pleasure be interviewed by Women in Clean Technology and Sustainability (WCS) as their member of the month. WCS is a non-profit organization headquartered in California that fosters community and networking among professionals in the green economy and has members from all over the United States and the world. We had a wide ranging discussion that covered the inspiration behind Ecoformatics, the opportunities for jobs and startups at the intersection of data science and clean technology and where we as a company can help. Read excerpts of the interview below or check out the entire interview at WCS' website here ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ECOFORMATICS IS YOUR BRAINCHILD, WHAT DOES IT DO? Ecoformatics was born out of an unmet need that I discovered while working as a data scientist and environmental engineer for several entities. The planet is facing so many challenges. At the ...

  Happy 2021 everyone! The year certainly started with a bang - if there’s one thing we can’t say - it’s that January has been a boring month.   With the change in administrations in the United States, we’ve seen several changes in climate and clean technology policy which will have significant impacts on the state of the market, startups in the field, funded research and technology developments. And this is likely to extend to the use of machine learning, AI, smart sensors and the other aspects of data science in clean technology. So, let’s take a quick look at what happened at the intersection of data science and clean technology in 2020 and what the prospects for 2021 look like.   Looking back at 2020 :     2020 of course, is the year like no other - divided between pre-pandemic and what happened as the pandemic took hold globally. So, how did that influence the trends in clean technology and the application of data science in the different sectors?   Pr...

  It's time for our last two events for us in 2020 - what a crazy year it's been!  Continuing our theme of exploring data science in different clean technology sectors, we're doing to be focusing on the energy sector this month.   On Friday, December 18th at 2 pm PT, we'll be holding a free webinar exploring the market and opportunities for data science in the energy sector - with a focus on renewables, the grid and buildings.     And then, on Sunday, December 20th at 11 am PT, we'll host a hands-on workshop where we'll look at the types of problems in the energy sector where data science is being applied, what data sources are useful and where to find them and how do we integrate physics based models and machine learning into our solutions. 

  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...

  What do Covid-19, social networks, traffic congestion and floods have in common? On the face of it, the answer would seem to be - nothing. But interestingly enough, all these systems can be represented in similar fashions - as nodes and networks with spatial and temporal effects.   So, scientists and researchers often try to see if models and ideas developed to solve problems in fields with similar representations can be adapted to problems in other fields.   A really interesting study was published in Nature   a couple of months ago, where researchers explored what happened when they adapted models used in understanding how infectious diseases like Covid spread to predicting floods in cities and urban systems.   How have floods and their impacts typically been modeled and why do people care? To start with, people care about flooding because it directly impacts their lives - when do areas have to be evacuated, how long should the evacuation last, and what are ...