Smart gardening, farming and modern technology for agricultural. Male gardener or farmer using tablet with empty screen and working on plantation with blooming apple trees with white flowers, cropped
Since those first microprocessor products first came out in the 1970s (calculators, microwave ovens, etc.) we have seen a rapid acceleration of technology in the workplace and in our homes. It’s a good bet that in your home today you have more computing power than NASA had to send astronauts to the Moon. We are in the middle of a ‘smart revolution’ that leaves many of us feeling a little dumb about how to understand and use all this smart technology.
The term “Smart” for technology actually started as an acronym – Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology – but has evolved over the years to encompass any device with local computing power that can collect data, share the data with other devices, and then act on the data. Think about the first Apple ‘Smart phone’ where Apple created a phone that also had various sensors on it to know your location, the temperature, motion, and a camera and had the capability to share that information over a cellular network. Of course, when people got hold of the smartphone they immediately wondered “what else can I do with it?” and the next thing we know there are thousands of applications – apps – available to download to the phone. Now that phone becomes a node in a network of interconnected devices sharing data; the Internet of Things (IoT).
Think about all the devices we have today in our homes for security, convenience, and entertainment that are part of the IoT. We have video doorbells (Ring is a great example) that allow us to view who is at our homes no matter where we are. We have refrigerators that can tell us remotely their temperature and even give us a picture of what is inside as well as voice assistants (Alexa) that allow us to monitor and command devices in our homes such as lights, washers, and even EV chargers. Entertainment was the first way these devices got into our homes for gaming and now with streaming video. Nanowerk.com estimates that by 2030 there will be 15 devices connected to the internet for every person on the planet! How do we keep up with all this technology and not be overwhelmed by it?
Technology in business has changed the way we work and interact with our customers and colleagues. Just three years ago who would have predicted that a significant portion of our workforce would be working remotely using video conferencing, cloud-based shared data, and a host of other collaboration technologies? We see ‘smart technologies’ impacting major all sectors of our economy:
Smart Factories with interconnected devices to control processes and share data with partners and customers anywhere in the world.
Smart Logistics allows tracking and tracing through the logistics chain, warehousing, and all the way to the end-user.
Smart Agriculture uses IoT sensors to gather data from the fields and allow farmers to be much more efficient to feed a growing population.
Smart Healthcare with sharing of data across a network of providers and even telehealth to allow people in underserved rural areas to have access to specialists.
Smart Cities using an IoT network of sensors and machines throughout a city’s infrastructure and services to develop, deploy, and promote sustainable development practices to address growing urbanization challenges.
So how do we navigate this bewildering sea of technology to make our businesses and communities “smart”? The answer lies in the main attribute that drives the smart revolution – connectivity – in this case connecting with knowledgeable people. With such a wide array of smart technology solutions, you need to have a network of trusted individuals to help you use these technologies to solve your real-world everyday problems.
That’s where INGITEQ, a division of The Ginn Group, comes in with experts in engineering and information technology to help you identify and analyze your needs, then develop a set of solutions that balance technology and cost to best suit your business model.
All businesses must learn to adapt to the ever-changing marketplace with even a holiday icon like Santa Claus evolving his massive North Pole workshops and global distribution system to bring joy to kids of all ages each Christmas Eve. Imagine if your company had to manage a global supply chain constantly adapting to the newest gift ideas, warehousing your production for 12 months followed by a frenzy of distribution in a 24-hour period!
To meet this challenge, Santa’s Workshop has adopted the latest in innovation culture and automation technologies. Innovation is more than a buzzword; innovation is essential to ensuring that the Workshop is on the cutting edge of developing new products, services, and processes to get the right toys to meet the individualized needs of each child. Recent innovations at The Workshop include an overhaul of its information technology infrastructure using ‘artificial intelligence’ along with ‘Santa Intelligence’ to maintain an accurate “Naughty and Nice” list. Next was the application of the latest automation technologies – programmable logic controllers (PLCs), variable frequency drives (VFDs), automated level control, PID loops, and others – to produce a wider range of toys in ever greater numbers. And don’t forget the Elves who were involved in every step of the process to ensure safety and a great working environment. Happy elves are productive elves!
With Covid impacting the global supply chain, even Santa’s Workshop had to innovate their Supply Chain Management to keep the flow of material coming to maintain a steady workload for the elf staff. With warehousing of gifts for most of the year, the ELF Team (Elf Logistics & Facilities) oversees everything from production equipment maintenance, building maintenance, to dining halls (an elf has to eat). Then on the big night, the distribution team takes the lead to stage all the gifts with the Flight Department ensuring that the sleigh and reindeer are in tip-top shape and exceeding all international airworthiness regulations!
Being Santa is a big job and he has constantly had to innovate across the centuries to deliver the joy of the season. Even though we don’t deliver all our services in one night, we all can learn lessons from Santa in our businesses as we push to serve our customers throughout the year.
The Ginn Group and INGITEQ wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
This part of our two-part blog on Foundational Challenges Facing Atlanta & Most Communities is excerpted from a talk given in April 2021 by R. Steven Justice to the Georgia Tech Executive Round Table Spring Conference which focused on “Atlanta Next” – issues facing the metro Atlanta area and potential solutions. Part one was posted on November 19, 2021.
Introduction
My background is in the aerospace industry where I worked on many cutting-edge programs before joining the Georgia Department of Economic Development in 2010 as the Aerospace Director and later Executive Director of the Center of Innovation program. During my years with the Georgia Centers of Innovation, I learned quite a bit about the needs of our communities large and small across Georgia and how our core infrastructure impacts communities and business.
In this blog today I talk about the other two of four foundational challenges that face the Atlanta area and apply across all our communities. These are challenges that could stimy or even bring growth to a halt but offer great opportunities for emerging companies and leaders to make your communities a positive example to the region and nation. I’m going to give you lots of facts along the way, hey I am an engineer, but I hope it gives you something to think about.
Water
Water is essential to life. It is also essential to our continued growth in Atlanta.
You might have heard on the news about the Georgia-Florida Water War. No, it’s not a big water balloon fight between fans at the Georgia-Florida football game. It’s much more important than that. Recently a lawsuit made it to the Supreme Court where Florida claims that Georgia takes too much water from the rivers that flow through our state into Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico. Florida wants the federal government to restrict how much water Atlanta and other communities can take for our use. No problem, right? We have plenty of water, it rains more each year in Atlanta than in Seattle. Yes Atlanta, we have a problem.
We have already experienced moratoriums on new building in many counties due to a lack of sufficient water and sewer capacity. No water equals no growth! It really comes down to two issues – access to water and how efficiently we use that water. While we have lots of water resources now, there is great demand and climate change will most likely impact our rainfall patterns over the coming decades. We must be prepared to do more with less.
Our water systems in Atlanta and many other communities are outdated and inefficient. It is “out of sight, out of mind” since those pipes are underground and never seen by most of us. But water main breaks result in wasted water and disruption of people’s lives and businesses. And those water main breaks are not uncommon events.
The EPA estimates that the average city water system loses about 16% of the treated water, with some older systems experiencing up to a 30% loss. One-third of the water lost!
I want to share some statistics for Atlanta’s water system to put this in perspective:
The Hemphill WTP, constructed in 1893, is Atlanta’s largest water plant that supplies approximately 65 percent of the drinking water supply for the City of Atlanta’. The plant has a treatment capacity of about 137 million gallons per day.
The Chattahoochee WTP, built in 1962, is the second-largest water facility with a treatment capacity of about 65 million gallons per day,
Atlanta has almost 2,800 miles of water distribution pipes ranging in size from 2 to 72-inches.
You can see our water needs are significant and the water system is a major part of our local infrastructure.
We need to update our old water systems to 21st-century technology to decrease our loss rate of water in the system and improve how we cleanse water before returning it into the waterways for downstream use. With almost 2,800 miles of pipes, how can we repair and replace century-old underground pipes without digging up the entire city? Do we move from centralized water and wastewater treatment system to a more distributed system employing new technologies? Would this type of system be more fault-tolerant? How do we apply new AI tools to water management? How can augmented reality and virtual reality be used to let us ‘see’ what is going on underground for water system repair and maintenance?
Water systems aren’t sexy, but the city and region that does not get a good handle on how they will meet the need for water will suffer economic stagnation.
Education
The last two years have been like no other for education due to the pandemic. Georgia Tech and other universities moved from in-person to totally online classes in just a few weeks. Our K-12 schools moved to online, and in many places to a hybrid mix of in-person and online. We have been forced to quickly expand the use of remote learning across the entire educational spectrum in a very short time and with mixed success. Do we simply go back to our previous in-person model after the pandemic? I believe our experiences during the pandemic give us a glimpse into how technology can revolutionize education in our city and state.
Our greatest asset in Atlanta is our people and currently, we waste the potential of many of our students due to the inability to provide a strong education to everyone regardless of their race, economic status, where they live, and other factors.
And this is not just an Atlanta issue, it is also true in our rural areas that have a hard time getting teachers and resources for their students. How does a small rural school afford a technology or engineering teacher for a small middle or high school? Most of the time they cannot and they don’t have broadband access to effectively use current remote teaching options.
Technology provides a potential solution to this problem by letting a teacher reach not just those students in a particular classroom, but students across the city and state. I think the experiences of Georgia Tech and faculty during this pandemic are a fantastic foundation to build on not just for the university, but for the entire educational system. How do we move forward from a ‘Zoom type’ learning environment to incorporate augmented reality and virtual reality to enhance the learning experience, to make it more personal and intimate? How can we more quickly expand broadband into all areas of the state to serve all schools and each residence to allow kids to use the network for learning at home? How can AI give teachers more insight and tools to personalize the learning experience for the student rather than teaching to a single common denominator?
I know that engineers and technologists don’t usually think of ourselves as directly involved in the K-12 educational system, but we have a big role to apply technology to the art of teaching to benefit our society. Of all the topics I’ve spoken of today, this is the one that most excites me the most and I believe can be a very fulfilling challenge for anyone taking it on.
Conclusion
There you go – water and education – foundational needs and challenges that will support all other growth and advances in our communities. These areas are ripe for innovation with tremendous potential benefits to our community and to society. At The Ginn Group and our engineering venture INGITEQ, we are committed to addressing these challenges through quality, responsive and cost-effective services, and solutions to meet the needs of our commercial, state/local government, and federal government customers. For more information about the other two foundational needs, transportation and energy, check out the first part of this two-part blog!
This part of our two-part blog on Foundational Challenges Facing Atlanta & Most Communities is excerpted from a talk given in April 2021 by R. Steven Justice to the Georgia Tech Executive Round Table Spring Conference which focused on “Atlanta Next” – issues facing the metro Atlanta area and potential solutions. Part two will be posted on December 10, 2021.
Introduction
My background is in the aerospace industry where I worked on many cutting-edge programs before joining the Georgia Department of Economic Development in 2010 as the Aerospace Director and later Executive Director of the Center of Innovation program. During my years with the Georgia Centers of Innovation, I learned quite a bit about the needs of our communities large and small across Georgia and how our core infrastructure impacts communities and business.
In this blog today I talk about two of four foundational challenges that face the Atlanta area and apply across all our communities. These are challenges that could stimy or even bring growth to a halt but offer great opportunities for emerging companies and leaders to make your communities a positive example to the region and nation. I’m going to give you lots of facts along the way, hey I am an engineer, but I hope it gives you something to think about.
Transportation
Transportation is at the very core of Atlanta’s existence since the city was founded in the 1840s as the junction of three railroads. Railroads represented the latest technology of the day, the steam engine, harnessed to allow transportation of people and goods overland at a level never seen before. Before that, cities were usually located near the coast or along rivers, but the railroads allowed Georgia to expand inland independent of those waterways to take advantage of the vast natural resources of Georgia.
Atlanta became the railroad hub for the southeast. Then as the next wave of transportation technology hit, namely the internal combustion engine, Atlanta became the hub of a road network eventually leading to three major interstate highways crossing here. And in the 1960s city leaders invested heavily in our airport which became the busiest in the world. Atlanta is now a major transportation and supply chain hub for rail, road, and air – just look at all the distribution centers everywhere – but our success has led to congestion and gridlock which threatens our continued growth. We keep building more roads, more MARTA rail lines, and more runways but at some point, we simply run out of space and money. We must build a more efficient transportation system.
Let’s look at the transportation problem that we as individuals face every day – how to get to work in Atlanta. We buy expensive capital assets, cars, to get us where we need to go. The average one-way commute in Atlanta is just over 30 minutes – we drive to work then park the car for 8 hours, drive back home, maybe do a side trip or two, then park the car until the next morning. That capital asset sits idle roughly 22 hours of the day taking up space and our money. This is a highly inefficient system.
Public transportation is one alternative but works best along high population density routes. It also does not address “the last mile” to get people from the rail or bus stop to their destination. We’ve recently seen the emergence of personal transportation services that make it uber easy to get a lift from where you are to where you want to go. But now we can leverage new automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to make those cars driverless and autonomous. This promises to lower costs and improve efficiency.
Imagine a metro area where you don’t own a car and all the capital and maintenance costs that go with it – you simply use the app on your phone to get reliable transportation service whenever and wherever you want it.
Now you arrange a pickup in the morning, the pod arrives, and you can now use those 30 minutes of commute time to relax or even work. The pod then goes off to serve other people all day long before you use the service again in the evening to go home. People who use public transportation can use the pods waiting at the MARTA station to take them the last mile to their destination. People who can’t drive now use the pods to go to the store or doctor appointments; kids can get home from after-school activities more easily. These pods keep moving all day only returning to their maintenance facility for fueling, maintenance, and cleaning. Sounds like a future I want to experience.
As we move down the road of transportation-as-a-service, there are numerous impacts to our society in how we design roads, how we integrate these pods with larger autonomous busses and trains to build an efficient network for everyone.
Now that we don’t need big parking lots everywhere, how do we repurpose that space? Maybe more green space? It changes the urban and suburban planning model in ways we can’t yet fully grasp.
Energy
Energy drives our transportation system and everything else in our economic system. As a society, we’ve gotten used to energy on demand and everything grinds to a halt when it’s not there – just look at Texas in early 2021 during historic cold weather. Germany had a similar experience in early 2017 when they had 6 weeks of cloudy and practically windless weather. It was so disruptive they even named it – “Dunkelflaute”, translated meaning “dark doldrums”. Germany had moved forcefully toward renewable energy – wind and solar – and started retiring most of their fossil fuel and nuclear plants. “Germany was forced to recommission coal power plants to simply keep the lights on” according to an article of the time. So, it’s clear we need an energy system that is diverse in its sources and with enough excess capacity to handle disruptions due to weather and other issues.
How are we in Atlanta and Georgia? Georgia imports over $26 billion in fossil fuels each year to fuel our electric powerplants and factories, mostly natural gas with the use of coal dwindling, along with gas and diesel for transportation. None of those fuels are produced in Georgia, so that’s $26 billion dollars we send out of state each year. Georgia is one of the top ten states for electricity from nuclear, accounting for roughly one-quarter of all electricity generation. And we have more capacity coming online soon. Solar and wind account for another 10% of our electricity generation and are growing each year. But as more of our transportation system switches to electric systems, the draw on our electrical grid will grow even more.
What do we do? We need to keep pushing technologies to make safer nuclear reactors, which have no greenhouse gas emissions and aren’t affected by the weather. The anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s and 1980s stymied nuclear power plant construction and research resulting in more coal power plants to meet the demand. We accepted, for a time, more greenhouse emissions to avoid the issues with nuclear. Our new nuclear options include small modular reactors, advanced fission, and hopefully fusion.
We must invest in further efficiency gains in solar panels from the roughly 20% level of today to around 30% – which is within reach – to increase our solar power production by 50% in the same footprint. We also should invest in technologies for wind, tidal, and hydropower that are appliable to our region and compatible with the environment.
But fossil fuels will be part of the mix for some time to come, especially in areas like aviation where batteries and fuel cells just won’t have the power density to displace liquid fuels in the foreseeable future. What do we do?
You can’t drive across Georgia without noticing that we have lots and lots of biomass. Arizona has deserts and sunlight, we have trees, trees, and more trees. In fact, our Forestry Commission estimates that we could more than double the commercial harvesting of trees in Georgia and still be below the sustainability line for tree growth.
On one hand, we have lots of biomass and on the other hand, lots of need for liquid fuels – what we need is the technology to turn that biomass into cost-competitive, drop-in carbon-neutral fuels that can replace the fuels we import now. We have the technology to make these fuels from biomass, but we need to bring the cost per gallon down to be competitive with fossil fuels.
Imagine not sending billion dollars each year out of state, but instead, those dollars going to our tree farmers and local refiners to supply our fuel needs ourselves – what a dramatic economic impact that would be… and a good for our environment.
Conclusion
There you go – transportation and energy – two of four foundational needs and challenges that will support all other growth and advances in our communities. These areas are ripe for innovation with tremendous potential benefits to our community and to society. At The Ginn Group and our engineering venture INGITEQ, we are committed to addressing these challenges through quality, responsive and cost-effective services, and solutions to meet the needs of our commercial, state/local government, and federal government customers. Watch for our next blog post to learn more about the other two foundational needs, water and education!
