New Series: Technology Innovator Interviews on the Need for a Digital Service for the Planet
In June of 2021, we launched a call to action for the federal government to create a Digital Service for the Planet modelled off the successes brought to social programs from the US Digital Service created in 2015. A new Digital Service for the Planet - a DSP - would address many of the core concerns of how the government utilizes technology for environmental applications. Within two weeks, over forty climate, conservation, and planet-focused tech businesses and nonprofits had signed on. These organizations are part of a wave of new efforts to rapidly develop hardware and software technologies to carry out key environmental management, monitoring and restoration tasks.
Over the next few weeks, we are sharing stories from those that support this new federal office and why a Digital Service for the Planet resonates with them. We are excited to share their opportunities for innovation, and how building better policies, regulations and institutions that embrace established technology will enable us to address environmental needs at scale.
To kick off the series, we have Kristen Hazard of Wildnote, Mark Sudol of Sudol Environmental Associates (SEA) and Doug Bruggeman of Ecological Services and Markets, Inc (ESaM). We will have a mix of individual responses and collated answers from the group. Let’s dive in!
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
For starters, what were some of the key components of the Digital Service for the Planet (DSP) that resonated with your team?
Kristen: Environmental consulting is driven by regulations, so compliance is our business. Implementing technology that functions within a regulatory system, facilitates that system, and also provides an elegant user experience is a big ask! It’s probably going to take a village. So, while we are busy building the physical technology to do that work, initiatives like DSP will build the institutional support needed to allow that technology to be used to its full potential. The decision to join the Digital Service For the Planet initiative was truly a no-brainer.
Doug: At ESam, we have developed innovative approaches for monitoring declining wildlife species and evaluating how to offset impacts to habitat across a landscape given climate change. Though we have published our methods, gained US Fish and Wildlife Service approval, and applied the method on-the-ground with three species, we have found significant challenges to having these new methods adopted. There is a lack of regulatory and market drivers to include these new techniques at a landscape scale. A Digital Service for the Planet could be the critical ingredient to facilitate at-scale adoption of proven techniques that have direct benefits for the recovery of species. We feel a cultural change is needed to develop methods for identifying the best available science and translating into innovative technology. Moreover, that cultural change would benefit greatly from stronger involvement by small businesses. We hope DSP could support a more open market of ideas and ensure that ideas are tested against observed data.
Mark: I work at the nexus of wetland permitting and project design from the local to national level. As a result, in my 20+ year career working with and for the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), I have seen how inefficient, cumbersome and costly wetland permitting and the accompanying restoration and mitigation programs can be. This is in large part from siloed data between agencies and time-consuming manual processes at multiple stages in the permitting process. I see great potential for a Digital Service for the Planet to improve the digital infrastructure and tools that the USACE uses, saving weeks of staff time that would directly expedite wetland restorations needed across America.
What are some key environmental challenges that your work is helping to address? Or, where is the low hanging fruit for environmental technology in government agencies that offer the greatest benefits or efficiencies?
Kristen: A top level call to action to standardize how data is collected and reported is the first step toward creating massive efficiencies for both permittees and government agencies. The Wildnote mission is “To help protect natural resources by automating the process of environmental compliance.” Automation only works when standards are in place. Once standardization is achieved, we will have a unified data set about our environment, and that’s when the magic of technology can really start producing results! A Digital Service for the Planet can create the framework for open data sources to be housed, accessed and put to work.
Mark: Environmental data is in large part collected by private sector consultants and then shared with government agencies for specific projects or permits. While this data is supposed to be shared publicly, most is not.
It is vital that government agencies standardize and establish protocols for environmental data sharing between agencies and with the public. This is an easily solvable challenge that would significantly reduce staff time and duplication of efforts.
Doug: The low hanging fruit in the species mitigation (crediting) industry is to move away from habitat- and GIS-based methods for estimating credits, to methods that include the influence of landscape and climate change on species demography and behavior over time.We have developed such techniques and they allow for a common data framework for estimating tradable credits for any species. This is a critical step for species recovery, yet we have found a lack of regulatory and market drivers to include such functional effects measured at a landscape scale. Existing methods are less complex, but not less uncertain. Developing a standard approach for translating the best available science and data into technology would greatly lessen the need to enforce the Endangered Species Act and reduce landowner burdens. As sustainability practitioners, our focus should be to work ourselves out of a job.
Based on your work or experience with federal government, what are the challenges for larger scale adoption of conservation technologies?
Kristen, Doug and Mark each noted that a lack of standardization of data and coordination between agencies and divisions are common barriers to large-scale adoption of technology. Without those two elements in place, the full potential of the benefits of technology can’t be realized.
Standardization
Standardization of data is a non-negotiable prerequisite upon which most of data technology’s potential is based, yet it is a step that often gets overlooked.
There is very little standardization in reporting environmental data to government agencies. It’s like the wild west. Even when reporting to the same agency in the same regions, the requirements can be inconsistent. The less permittees have to adjust to those variables, the more efficiently they can complete projects and the more automation can be utilized.
Coordination
There is also a lack of a coordinated strategy between government agencies for making conservation technology investments. Each agency has its own scope of work, and their technology decisions are made independent of each other. However, from the outside, it's crystal clear to us that there are inherently overlaps between the work of agencies and the data they collect and use. However, due to the lack of coordination and unified data systems between agencies, it can often take days to get the data needed from one agency to another. Investing in technology that allows for the appropriate use of data across agencies and disciplines is key to large scale adoption.
Lastly, could you share some concrete drawbacks from not having a DSP, as well as benefits that could result from its creation?
Kristen: It is common to find technology experts who know little about environmental conservation methodologies, and environmental experts who know little about the most current advanced technologies. They may have little or no contact with each other and lack any mechanism for critical dialog and interaction when evaluating technology and developing programs. This leads to programs that fail to consider, leverage, and integrate appropriate technology. Instead, it is implemented as an afterthought that rarely satisfies the users and is not likely to be widely adopted. This pattern is especially common across federal government agencies. A DSP would serve as the necessary glue to provide strategy, cohesion, and technical support to environmental agencies to address this challenge. We are especially enthusiastic about the recommendation to “Move Chief Technology / Information Officers into mission-focused roles within agencies.”
Mark: Each Army Corps regulator has 40-60 wetland permits on their desk at any given time, and there are roughly 60,000 permits issued annually. It currently takes each regulator about a week to schedule time to manually enter the basic data from the permit application into the relevant databases. Anecdotal evidence has estimated at least 10% of permits are returned for “incomplete data,” which significantly delays the process.
As such, there is a huge opportunity for electronic or automated processes to speed up this process that could result in ~12% time savings per permit application (or more!). A DSP could facilitate this process and improve data sharing between permittees, consultants and regulators. This would also have significant benefits in improving trust with agency personnel and the government’s ability to use this data for other important decisions.
Doug: DSP could facilitate a huge cultural change that is needed to use data effectively to mitigate climate change and species extinction. The absence of DSP has led to a vacuum in leadership during a critical time in the Earth’s history. Federal agencies currently don’t have the resources to effectively translate data into decisions using the latest technology, nor do they have a culture of utilizing new tools or approaches.
The vacuum in leadership that embraces technology has led to the prevalence of “bespoke” solutions promoted by the private sector that do not undergo scientific peer-review process. Such mainstreaming of bespoke strategies makes standardization and coordination much more difficult moving forward. Further, given the recent explosion in machine learning and artificial intelligence, the conservation community has no way of determining the appropriateness of technology for management problems. We must be aware that not all technological advances are equally valuable for sustainability. A DSP could support agencies in their modernization of tools utilized to inform landscape-level planning and market-based strategies.
Wildnote, SEA, and ESaM have each built technologies and techniques to meet government needs. Those tools have improved the efficiency of carrying out time-consuming tasks and data management. Decision support tools and automated processes can improve natural resource stewardship and free up people for the tasks that require critical thinking, judgment and expertise. Each of these companies has real world experience building those tools, but seen when and why new technology falls way short of its scaled potential. A Digital Service for the Planet would support agencies' expanded use of the appropriate technologies for their programs and lay the foundation for 21st century tools to help agencies flourish.
Stay tuned for the upcoming blogs where we will explore this further with organizations that have expertise in geospatial tools, water management, biodiversity and more!
### About these organizations
Wildnote
Wildnote is a cloud-based data collection, management, and reporting application for the environmental services community, founded in 2014 by Kristen Hazard in San Luis Obispo, CA. Hazard brings 20 years of software development expertise, including more than 10 within the environmental consulting industry. As an advanced environmental compliance automation solution, this technology platform supports a broad array of environmental consulting disciplines including wetland delineation, biological monitoring, construction compliance, cultural resource management, and ecological restoration.
Sudol Environmental Associates
Mark Sudol, founder of Sudol Environmental Associates, brings over 20 years working with the Army Corps of Engineers on wetland permitting program, first as a Permit Manager in the Los Angeles District, next as Senior Wetland Scientist and Branch Chief managing the Los Angeles District wetland program across southern California and Arizona, and finally as the Chief of the Regulatory Program for the Corps Headquarters in DC. He spent several years as a private consultant processing permits for landowners and developers, and has a robust understanding of both sides of the wetland permitting process across the US.
Ecological Services and Markets, Inc.
Ecological Services and Markets (ESaM) was founded in 2009 by Dr. Doug Bruggeman to build landscape-scale approaches for economic incentive programs. The founder designed smart credits to defragment habitat for at-risk species as a graduate student and completed a Postdoc applying Machine Learning to integrate Adaptive Management into credit programs for non-equilibrium landscapes (i.e., landscapes experiencing habitat loss and/or climate change). ESaM has demonstrated that species credit programs are a viable conservation strategy at a landscape-scale even when non-equilibrium conditions and uncertainty are incorporated into decision making. They have further demonstrated the method can lower mitigation ratios significantly when defragmentation occurs, or raise them if fragmentation effects are increased by a trade.
