Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting is a hot topic in corporate sustainability. Businesses are expected to demonstrate their commitment to environmental, social, and governance practices by providing transparent information on their performance.
There are a number of ways that technology can improve your ESG reporting.
Sensor technology can help you identify issues before they become problems. Sensors are able to monitor environmental conditions, productivity and workplace safety. This information can be used to improve your operations and reduce risks that could impact your bottom line or reputation.
ESG reporting automation tools can help you to streamline your efforts and make ESG reporting more efficient. By automating the process of collecting data, these tools make it possible for companies across industries to track multiple metrics in real time.
For example, one tool allows users to self-report on their own environmental impact by uploading photos or videos that show how they're working toward a more sustainable future. This saves companies from having to send employees out into the field in order to collect this information manually--saving both time and money!
Integrated reporting tools are systems that can collect and analyse data from a variety of sources. They automate the collection, processing, analysis and presentation of ESG information so that you don't have to manually gather it yourself. This can save you time and money while providing more accurate information--it's like having an army of robots doing your work for you!
The two most common types of integrated reporting tools are:
Integrating intelligent devices into your ESG reporting will help you get better results.
The future of ESG reporting is here, and it's exciting. The ability to connect intelligent devices and automate your ESG reporting will change the way you do business. By integrating these technologies into your everyday operations, you can make sure that your company stays ahead of the curve when it comes to sustainability and environmental impact.
Many businesses, not just factories, can benefit from sensors. They can monitor doors, count products, maintain temperatures, control production lines, automate stock records and optimise a host of other functions from the most simple to the most complex. They are cheaper and more capable than ever before: if you aren’t using them already you should be exploring the possibilities, but how you connect them is a key consideration.
Arguably, a door-bell is a simple wired sensor but a door bell can also be wireless. Even in the case of door bells, the best solution may be deployment-specific. Here are some of the key advantages and disadvantages to consider when deciding how to connect your sensors.
Quick, and therefore cheap, installation is often a decisive advantage in favour of wireless sensor systems. Wireless is frequently the only sensible solution in listed buildings or on sites already crowded with infrastructure. It is usually more viable when the site is split between several locations. Wireless connection easily causes less disruption to ongoing operations and less damage to plaster and floorboards.
In contrast, once you have paid for the equipment and installation, running costs should favour wired networks that do not need to lease bandwidth. Nevertheless, wireless IoT solutions are usually cheaper overall - as are future modifications, equipment relocations and network extensions.
A downside to connectivity is always the potential for intrusion or data corruption. IoT and Cloud solutions offer a range of protections and many come free - relieving you of a significant IT burden. Wired networks keep more points of vulnerability in-house, but are only more secure if you have personnel who know how to protect them. New security enhancements - such as SDN - can provide signal encryption and dynamic routing with minimal IT overheads.
Wired Ethernet networks are often a sound decision when all of your infrastructure is reachable. Wireless solutions have an obvious advantage if you need to connect remote equipment. If you are a utility operator, a farmer with multiple scattered assets, or a transportation company whose assets are moving, other options make little sense.
When your assets are in exposed locations, even inside a factory, remember that not all wired switches, routers and hubs are robust when subjected to extreme temperatures, moisture, grit, or power spikes. Wifi is therefore more reliable in harsh environments.
Wireless sensors are easy to replace or relocate without rewiring anything. You can also easily extend the network to incorporate additional operations, even when they are in a different building. Wired networks often require IT engineers to keep them running properly.
In contrast, wireless networks rarely require attention - they communicate over the Internet, which is maintained for you. Wireless technology makes it easier to benefit from upgrades and patches, or new Cloud software as it comes along.
By linking your devices using the IoT, your wireless network and Cloud resources can become scalable to fluctuating demands. If your production scales down, so does your consumption of bandwidth. If it scales up, extra capacity should be available on demand. With the right contracts in place, your sensor-control infrastructure can become a fixed and predictable percentage of your operating overheads. By comparison, a physical network always costs money to expand and returns nothing when it contracts.
Some wireless sensors rely on batteries. The advantage of batteries is that your wireless devices stay on and connected even in a power failure. The downside of batteries is that changing them usually takes a sensor offline (although this can be avoided using capacitive power storage). Conversely, wired sensors will always fail if their whole network fails or has to be powered down for maintenance.
Even in a total blackout, battery-powered wireless sensors continue sending your data to the Cloud via the IoT and you can continue monitoring them with your smartphone.
Any network issue could interrupt wireless services, so if 100% continuity is vital to your operations, a fall-back plan is important. However, wired networks are also susceptible to power failures and other interruptions, so backup plans could be needed anyway.
Electromagnetic interference from power lines is unlikely to affect physically wired equipment but sometimes causes a problem for wireless sensors. There are usually workarounds or shielding solutions for these local problems.
The choice between wired and wireless need not be either/or. A good IoT development team will help you to integrate wireless sensors with wired ones according to the issues in different locations - and enjoy the benefits of both.
The last decade has seen huge advances in artificial intelligence, smart devices and video analytics. The next will see a dramatic increase in the devices built from them. In fact, demand will be so high that we need to start thinking about our capacity to deliver them.
One bottleneck is the networks over which we expect them to connect. As 5G rolls out, 4G is still patchy outside urban areas and the capacity of our networks to carry 5G traffic has been questioned. Its rollout was also somewhat muted by attacks on phone masts by protesters.
Data centres are also feeling the strain. As more companies, individuals and devices link to Cloud services, data centres have to increase capacity, but noise abatement and heat dissipation make expanding or finding new sites a challenge.
The irony is that only a few emerging technologies need an explosively growing network; demand seems to be driven by people rather than machines. Follow any link to a 4G or 5G website and you quickly discover the benefit of being able to download a 2hr movie in 10 seconds. A strange boast considering that almost everyone now streams, not downloads, movies (and we can’t help wondering why they need them on the move).
By comparison, a smart meter reports your gas and electricity usage about six times per day, taking about 3 seconds in total. Smart meters also use data maintaining their network but that only raises their usage to about 1 minute.
Only a few devices need to transmit more than a few kilobytes of information per hour, nothing comparable to a movie download. Visual feeds from cameras are heavier on bandwidth, but how many hours of CCTV footage of empty buildings do we really need to collect on central servers?
The IoT is a outstanding medium for data gathering and remote control; the Cloud is ideal for data storage and leasing advanced applications, but the most exciting frontier is the development of autonomous systems. When we can store sophisticated algorithms on a chip, smart devices are not only less dependent on human management, but also less dependent on networks. Problems such as communication interruption, bandwidth overload, and response latency begin to disappear.
The obvious example is the self-driving car. Not only are they heavily dependent on advanced image recognition but must perform it at a blistering speed. If they had to depend on a remote server for their analytics, they could never match the response times of human drivers. There are several other reasons for providing self-driving cars with a connection (traffic information for example) but the visual analytics that enable it to drive have to be local.
Video feeds are also a heavy load on human observers. CCTV security systems will be more effective when the equipment itself can identify salient events. In fact, the raison d'être for driverless cars is to improve on the situational awareness and sluggish responses of tired human drivers.
Cloud (or other network) dependence is the weak link in many IoT deployments, impairing its speed and reliability. The alternative is to distribute the processing workload close to the edge of the network - near the device. This is often called “Edge computing”.
Rapid situational awareness can often be achieved by incorporating AI or video recognition algorithms onto the device itself, or supplying them in a specialised processing unit in close proximity. This infrastructure can still work in symbiosis with distant resources and control systems, but the bulk of the processing is shifted as close as possible to where it is immediately needed.
In the next few years, real-time information response capabilities will find a multitude of new niches and transform existing ones. For example, video surveillance has been booming for years (in retailing, transport and security systems), but re-establishing those systems on edge architectures will transform their value by making the intelligence they collect actionable.
Knowing which bus ran you over might be useful in an inquest, but we would rather be warned that the bus is coming. Or consider the difference between scouring a police officer’s bodycam footage to see who fired at them, with a system that can recognise a gun and issue a warning that saves their life.
Ideal solutions will often be hybrid. Many systems can learn to recognise faces locally, for example at ATMs and robotic checkouts, yet they can still liaise with central repositories when needed.
Fully autonomous robots are no longer far-fetched, but in the meantime let Net 4 show you how to future proof your video processing systems.
