Digital technology and the environment

Our physical environment is a rich source of data. Rivers flow with it, storms swirl with it, soil teems with it. It can inform our daily lives, our interaction with the natural world, and has direct and indirect implications for our economic activity. In fact, data describing our physical environment, and the information and insight drawn from them, has underpinned all human progress.

In many ways, the emergence of what is commonly called “big data”—large data sets characterized by the speed at which they are generated, often in real time, and their variety and granularity—should merely reflect an extension of how we engage with our natural environment. Nature is big data. It offers an unprecedented opportunity for scientific progress and innovations that can address our most pressing environmental problems and improve our living conditions.

Environmental management and policy hold the potential to be an important data frontier.

In fact, the environment is the next data frontier. While businesses and societies have already been disrupted by the advent of big data and digital technologies, the physical environment presents the next big opportunity, not least as a result of technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), which is generating 400 zettabytes of new data every year.

More specifically, we face two opportunities. First, to collect and curate environmental data across government agencies, industry sectors, and NGOs in a way that is open and accessible. Second, to turn that data into value and insight. So far, we have not capitalized on fully on either opportunity.

The next data frontier

Applying digital technologies to environmental data can also make it easier to manage environmental conditions and extend involvement in that management more broadly. This, in turn, helps inform better environmental policies and regulations—even change the way environmental decisions are made.

For example, bird migrations often cross multiple regions and borders, and are difficult to predict. This makes conservation efforts and creating the right policies challenging. But using over twenty years of radar data, one forecast model accounted for more than 80% of the variance in bird migration patterns. Armed with this understanding, conservation efforts could more effectively mitigate danger to migrations with more targeted, less disruptive policies.

By marrying digital technologies with abundant environmental data, transformative change to advance sustainability is attainable.

Moreover, environmental data and insights drawn from analysis of it have the potential to transform traditional regulatory approaches by mobilizing nongovernmental drivers for change. The private sector, civil society, and machine-aided control and correction systems can help drive needed change without the need for government intervention. These complementary drivers could greatly reduce the load for regulators and regulations.

However, in many instances, environmental initiatives using big data and digital technologies have yet to reach the scale where local or even national economies are transformed toward a more environmentally sustainable trajectory. Why? Part of the reason may be the nature of environmental data.

Environmental data: The right ecosystem grows a more sustainable future

Read the full report to learn how next-gen digital technology, better data governance, and the right information architecture can accelerate collaborative solutions and innovations for environmental sustainability.