SAS AI-powered deforestation detection app recognised as world-changing Sunday, 27 June 2021 17:54 SAS AI-powered deforestation detection app recognised as world-changing
Shares
Analytics software and solutions company SAS received was honourably mentioned in the Fast Company World Changing Ideas Awards for its joint project with the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis tracking the human impact in the Amazon rainforest. It is one of many social innovation projects from SAS employees inspired to apply data to solve pressing humanitarian issues.
The honour came on World Rainforest Day last week, under the AI and Data category of the Fast Company World Changing Ideas Awards. The awards honour businesses, policies, projects and concepts which actively and deeply pursue innovations in the realm of health and climate crises, social injustice, or economic inequality.
When community members participate in renewable energy planning and financing especially with community microgrids or community solar they facilitate the move to renewable energy, said the co-author of a new study on shared decision making from the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis.
Shutterstock.com
The study, “Public Attitudes, Co-production and Polycentric Governance in Energy Policy,” focused on projects in two towns in Austria that aim to utilize high levels of renewables up to 100%, said Nadejda Komendantova, one of the study’s authors.
In the town of Freistadt, residents formed energy communities aimed at creating a microgrid managed by a private company. The residents could not opt out of the microgrid which supplied all their energy needs but they could choose among various forms of participation. They could install rooftop PV, take part in management or purchase a share of the project.
We wish to thank Dr. Giorgios Kallis for his wide-ranging response to our lead essay and for his collegiate tone. Kallis writes that “The problem now is not resource scarcity, but damage to the environment (e.g., biodiversity).” He notes that “Resource use grows hand in hand with GDP, even in service economies like the US or the UK where economists expected reductions,” and he advocates in favor of “degrowth.” Finally, Kallis believes that “satisfactory levels of wellbeing can be achieved at a fraction of the highest national incomes.”
The focus on environmental damage as a by-product of population growth, economic growth, and growth in consumption has a long pedigree. In 1982, for example, a group of ecological economists met in Stockholm and published a manifesto warning of natural limits on human activity. “Ecological economists distinguished themselves from neo-Malthusian catastrophists by switching the emphasis from resources to systems,” wrote one histor
Economic growth based on forest conversion has no future | News | Eco-Business eco-business.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eco-business.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.