Welcome to eEnvironmental Management

Hosted by Dr. Bill Smart - (contact)

Hi All - I was chosen to head the discussion in eEnvironmental Management, as part of my Ph.D. I authored a web-mounted information system for carbon sequestration and accounting. You can find out more about me and the system by visiting my personal Website located at infotech.scu.edu.au/wsmart the system was limited (by bandwidth) in how large/detailed it could be.

The Carbon Calculator was designed to calculate carbon credits / NGACs (N.S.W. Greenhouse Abatement Certificates) that could be claimed on environmental plantings or timber plantations using crop rotation (100 year cycle). The site is limited to four (4) timber stands per property. Whereas additional stands could assist in earning carbon credits for timber plantations (less offsets in time between plantings) this was not added to the system due to the bandwidth constraints.

Access to ultra-fast broadband would allow vast amounts of environmental data to be gathered via monitoring devices (for example sampling water, air quality, salinity and much more), or from field researchers.

Additionally, ultra-fast broadband would allow greater collaboration between environmental researchers, via face-to-face video. In fact meetings of all sorts (public, private but mostly business) via video would have a vast savings in carbon emissions as the high quality video link-ups would replace or reduce the amount of travelling undertaken for meetings.

Greenspan is a leading edge company providing innovative integrated environmental monitoring solutions throughout the world. With the head office based in Coffs Harbour the annual turnover is currently more than $10 million with expansion plans to treble operations to $30 million by 2012. This case study was used in the Southern Cross University lead submission to the government "The benefits of early adoption for the National Broadband Network spanning Australia’s Eastern Regional Corridor", this case study is included below.

I am looking for other examples where access to ultra-fast broadband will assist in this field. Please feel free to use the discussion forum to comment or give an example. I will post up other case studies as they come to light.

CASE STUDIES

Greenspan Technology