ENTREPRENEURS bqlive.co.uk
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Mapping out a solution Businesses and governments have long been aware that their working environments, both at home and globally, are changing. Thinking beyond our homes and offices, these environments extend to the farms that produce our coffee and barley, the forests that provide timber, house most of the world’s animals and take carbon out of the atmosphere, and the vast lakes, rivers and oceans that provide us with most of our fresh water and the air we breathe. A changing climate creates risk and uncertainty in all these environments, and organisations need to be increasingly quick to react. One technology company in Edinburgh is at the forefront of helping global businesses and governments to reduce the time it takes to gather and understand this data from months to mere hours. Ecometrica has developed end-to-end environmental software-as-a-service (SaaS) that allows companies to account for their use of energy, water and other resources and enables governments to use satellite data to monitor forests, farms and other locations on a landscape scale. “Our platform is a bit like Netflix – we produce some of our own content but there is also other third-party providers’ content on our platform too,” explains executive chairman Richard Tipper, who co-founded the company in 2008. “That could be publicly-available free information or it could be commercial information. “We’re not trying to produce all the content ourselves. Instead, we work with the best experts in each area and see how they can package up their expertise and content and transmit it over our platform to end users.” Chief executive Gary Davis, one of Tipper’s cofounders, adds: “That’s where our strengths lie. There’s a lot of complexity involved in the chain of taking data from a satellite and turning it into something usable that can be interpreted in a web browser.
“We take away all of that complexity and give our clients – whether they’re governments or corporates – a solution that they can access in a web browser without having to be an expert. You don’t have to go to university and learn how a geographic information system (GIS) works to use our platform and get answers out of it. “These days, people are familiar with Google Maps and similar applications, so that provides some kind of level of familiarity with an interface such as ours. When you see one of our maps, you intuitively know how to interact with it and get insights from it. “We have hidden away all the complexity that’s required to get that information to you so you don’t have to know how it works. It means decision makers can use a web browser to get really important, detailed insights into their landbased assets from anywhere in the world.” That information and those insights can come in all different shapes and sizes. For companies, the mainstay of Ecometrica’s work is to help them account for their GHG emissions, their use of energy, water and other resources, and their impact on the natural world. “GHG accounting is now mandatory in the UK for quoted companies,” explains Davis. “Requiring corporates to report their emissions has driven change. “Companies are competitive – they want to do better than they did last year and are competitive with their peers. To drive down GHG emissions, you need to reduce energy or other consumption and that in turn reduces costs. “We specialise in providing the accounting systems to enable companies to account for
their environmental performance, including GHGs. From that they will take on initiatives themselves internally or with the help of experts like ourselves to work out reduction strategies. “Most companies will have some form of reduction strategy, whether they know it or not, because they will always be looking to take costs out where they can. Quite often you’ll see the carbon efficiency or energy efficiency of a company increase over time. “The amount of GHG produced per thousand pound of turnover will be going down over time. Business has made a lot of progress in this area and it’s a business imperative to do so. “By accounting for those GHGs, you can tell that story at the same time. One of the things we do is help our clients to tell that story.” Ecometrica has worked with a roster of bluechip clients over the years, including Associated British Foods, oil giant BP and transport group National Express. Overseas customers include CSA Group, formerly the Canadian Standards Association, and mining firm Iamgold Corporation. When it comes to the public sector, the company can help governments to monitor whether their policies and programmes are being effective on a landscape or regional scale. Its technology platform takes Earth observation (EO) data from satellites and uses in-built tools to analyse the information, giving users the answers they need. “For example, as part of its climate change commitments, the UK spends about £200m a year to support developing countries to help reduce deforestation, improve forest management and restore forests,” says Tipper. “The effectiveness of that revenue stream needs
“You don’t have to go to university and learn how a geographic information system (GIS) works to use our platform and get answers out of it”