Ethics rule our behaviours. We see ethical marketing, ethical company governance, ethical issues at the workplace, and many more in the community. As an environmental consultant, what are our ethical practices to ensure things go the right way?
According to the National Association of Environmental Professionals, integrity is one of the keystones of being a professional environmentalist, from collecting environmental data, interpreting the data, presenting the data in reports, and engaging scientific methods in research, planning, design, management, and review of activities.
Why do we pick data to tie integrity and the environment? Data integrity represents the overall data accuracy, completeness, and consistency during its lifecycle. Data authenticity, entirety, and transparency matter when there is an unauthorised data alteration in the database. The inaccurate data shifts the decision makers’ thinking path, causing poor judgment.
As the environmental protection trend goes, infrastructure project proponents, including the builders, the operators are obliged to monitor and manage the environment where the facilities are sitting. The environmental ordinance has pre-set scopes and parameters as a benchmark to scrutinise the impacts. The facility nature defines which regulation the facility should comply with. In Hong Kong, we have diverse environmental ordinances to fulfil – air, water, waste, noise, hazardous chemicals, ozone layer, mercury and more. The environmentalists will scientifically conduct the measurement by collecting environmental data to analyse the facilities’ environmental performance and test whether they comply with the regulation.
That is how we connect the relationship between data integrity and environmental protection.
The need for integrated environmental monitoring boosts the use of data management platforms. The data management platforms incorporate the Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensory device to receive real-time environmental data and synchronise the data to the online platform through the Internet. The IT security secures the network from illegal penetration. The data is untouched by third-party through the control-centre monitoring – this is the main reason why the data remains a virtue.
One of the environmental IoT development is the noise compass. The three-dimensional Noise Compass can alert the project staff by selecting alarms for combinations of sound pressure levels
and incident angles. Thus, we can exclude sections of the measurement when the source location is outside the interest region. For example, when Leq is above 75 dB, and the sound is coming from the construction site, excluding the parts of a measurement contaminated by railway noise from the LDEN calculation.
The integrated environmental monitoring platform is the communication bridge between the IoT device and the project stakeholders. The system tracks the critical events. The project proponent applies rules to alert key stakeholders if over the limit. The platform can also be enhanced with visualisation. The visualisation further streamlines the environmental monitoring works with modules of site overview visualisation, CCTV Livestream, various ecological tracking and project management.
On the one hand, it manages spatial data, non-structured data, structure data, IoT data, CCTV streaming data, and analyse data. On the other hand, it aids the project stakeholders by viewing the project through the interactive chart and map, dual charts and maps comparison, 2D Drones Orthophoto, time-varied Animation, geo-tag information input and Photo gallery. Customised dashboard and back-end analysis is a plus to the users to diagnose the data for reporting. None of the above environmental visualisations and reports would be correctly built without proper data import.
ANewR Consulting Limited is exhilarated to be commissioned to design, develop, and maintain a one-stop 3D visualisation platform for IWMF, Hong Kong’s flagship waste management facilities – The Integrated Waste Management Facilities. The Integrated Waste Management Facilities (IWMF), the municipal waste incineration plant, is located at Shek Kwu Chau. IWMF will be built on an artificial island, which means reclamation is inevitable. Besides the terrestrial ecology of Shek Kwu Chau, Shek Kwu Chau is inhabited by about 300 rehabilitators and staff of the Society for the Aid and Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts (SARDA). Comprehensive environmental monitoring is imperative for the project’s hit without adversely impacting the ecology and the inhabitants. And, this is why we encourage integrated environmental monitoring practice.
By: ANewR Consulting Limited, a digital environmental consultant headquartered in Hong Kong since 2008. Our expertise has grown into the context of air and water qualities, noise, green building, waste management, and remediation. With extensive know-how in environmental planning and assessment, feasibility study and policy review, ecological design, monitoring, and audit (EM&A), ANewR has matured to be a leading management consultancy. Standing in the digital transformation reign, ANewR has participated in various environmental digital projects – interactive 3D visualisation, immersive automation virtual environment, Virtual reality, automation system, and monitoring platforms.
(Website: https://anewr.com, LinkedIn: ANewR Consulting Group, Twitter: ANewR – Everyday Newer,YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnpvmxnR9hbNxytSfBdfV8Q/videos)
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