At Sphera, we take risk very seriously. This is why our mission, in large part, requires the monitoring, assessing, adopting and evolving of the critical technology trends that help companies with operational risk, product stewardship, environmental, health and safety requirements today—and tomorrow.
We believe technological advances can help lower risk, improve safety and maintain sustainability all while improving financial performance. Big data and predictive analytics; the Internet of Things, or IoT; data visualization tools; and, of course, the continued evolution of mobile and cloud solutions will continue to be a boon to the EHS space.
Take IoT technology, for example. IoT will be particularly pivotal in providing predictive information that will help prevent environmentally hazardous incidents.
Containment sensors in municipal water infrastructure could for instance, discover lead leaking from pipes and signal contamination of a water supply so an environmental and health crisis can be avoided. Soil sensors in states like California can also help prevent droughts. Agriculture accounts for about 80 percent of water use in California, and soil sensors could tell us exactly when crops need watering. Additionally, the risks associated with industrial waste, air pollution and water contamination could all be mitigated to large extent by various IoT technologies.
IoT technologies are perfect for advancing operational excellence because of the complexities of operational ecosystems in which various technologies need to communicate in bidirectional manners to prevent adverse events from occurring.
Moreover, the data aggregated from these integrated networks are best analyzed by the application of algorithms embedded in software to identify trends and predict potential dangerous incidents before they happen. Sensors will need to be able to transmit data, which can be mined across the entire workflow to identify and predict potential hazards that need to be mitigated.
IoT is merely one facet of where technology is taking Sphera and the industry overall. With the continuous development of our software, the vast amount of regulatory data we track and the decades of thought leadership that our experts possess, Sphera is ideally positioned to help organizations achieve significant results in terms of employee safety, sustainable products and productive assets.
In the coming months and years, Sphera will continue to monitor and employ upcoming technologies like IoT to their full capabilities to satisfy our customers’ needs to stay up-to-date with, and even ahead of, the regulatory compliance curve.