Can Environmentalists Use Big Data to Save the Environment?
There’s a lot of talk about how rain forests are being destroyed, global warming is getting worse and if we don’t do something drastic to help the Earth, future generations will suffer even more than people in some places are currently. They may not even have a planet left to enjoy. In addition to doing things like urging consumers to recycle and consider investing in cars that aren’t as dependent on fossil fuels, some environmentalists are turning to big data.
Experts depend on big data in a variety of ways. One of them that’s most familiar to you may be how marketers track trends by looking at consumer behaviors over time. However, there are also some environmental-centric ways to depend on collective insights. For example, those animated weather maps you see on news forecasts? They’re made possible because of big data.
Forward-thinking people who invest in the Earth’s future are excited about ways to use big data to solve problems associated with the planet instead of just poring over existing data. There are some challenges that remain, however. For example, government regulation will be necessary to fully harness big data’s potential. Furthermore, there are many uncertainties related to how we’ll source the big data and use it.
Despite those factors, some organizations already use big data to inform meaningful, eco-friendly approaches. Let’s look at a couple of examples below.
If you check the weather forecast for your town or city, there’s probably a section that discusses air quality and pollution amounts. The usual method of gathering that data involves putting a gauge somewhere in an area and assuming every person in the vicinity is getting the same amount of exposure to contaminants. However, Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, of Barcelona, Spain’s, Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology, is doing things differently.
He asserts it’s possible to get better, more precise results by having people wear pollution checkers individually.
