October 1999

Environment and Infrastructure: How We Can Use Information Technology to Avert Another Tragedy of the Commons

". . .the Great Lakes belong to the public, and it is only the pressure of such scrutiny that would sustain the water quality."

I am glad to have been asked to write my thoughts on the potential of applying existing and emerging information technology (IT) to Great Lakes issues and how I would do it. I live in Toronto, a beautiful city on shore of one of the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario to be specific. I have never swum in Lake Ontario. That is because I know what is in Lake Ontario but not who put it there or when.

First, let me provide a little background information on the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are situated in central North America and are largely shared between Canada and the USA through a bilateral arrangement between those two countries. The official body overseeing this agreement is the International Joint Commission (IJC). The Commissioners of the IJC are appointed in equal numbers by both Federal administrations and are often regarded as being political appointments in nature.

Officially, the IJC attempts to prod both Federal governments as well as the bordering State and Provincial governments to improve the quality of the Great Lakes waters. This prodding usually turns into funding schemes for government agencies that accomplish little in what appears to be glacial speed. There are many reasons for this: buck passing, jurisdictional uncertainties and squabbles, pro status quo lobbying, agency jealousy and infighting, political sensitivities, incompetence as well as the ubiquitous catchall: the budget cut.

The truth is simple: The Great Lakes economy is one of the largest in the world. The long-term viability of this enormous economy is predicated on a robust Great Lakes system.

So how would I apply information technologies to the Great Lakes basin? First, I would define the Great Lakes as infrastructure. Just because we didn't build them, doesn't mean that they aren't infrastructure. Once we apply the infrastructure moniker to the situation, an entirely different mindset emerges.

We already know how to use IT to monitor infrastructure: sewage systems, water reservoirs and treated water systems. It's the scale that is different when we address the Great Lakes. This is where IT really comes into its own thanks to powerful database programs and the ubiquitous TCP/IP stack, also known as the Internet.

Permit me an assumption that holds true for all infrastructure. You, or anyone else, can only interact with any infrastructure if you have regulatory approval, usually some sort of a Certificate of Approval (COA). This is true for water treatment and sewage treatment facilities, landfills, driving a car on the highways, flying an airplane, installing a natural gas fired furnace, etc. Unfortunately this is not the case with the Great Lakes. It is a free for all there. COA's must be required to use the Great Lakes infrastructure. 

If an entity, corporate or otherwise, wishes to discharge effluents or pollutants into or draw water from the Great Lakes basin, the IJC should be empowered to participate in the COA process for those permits that make use of or affect the water quality of the Great Lakes. IJC participation could be limited but the IJC should be permitted to veto any COA if the entity does not submit to voluntary, supervised monitoring by the IJC's agents at the entity's interfaces with the Great Lakes infrastructure. The monitoring fee could be part of the COA costs to the entity.

There are many thousands of such entities. This large sampling size would enable a very accurate picture of what is going on inside the Great Lakes in real time and at a very low cost. The data stream would be statistically tamperproof. The aggregated information could be checked against another important and underutilized IT opportunity, satellite imaging. The information could, where warranted, be published on the IJC web site for public scrutiny. After all, the Great Lakes belong to the public, and it is only the pressure of such scrutiny that would sustain the water quality.

The methodology for this monitoring is straightforward. Depending on the location, a sensing station is installed that is capable of monitoring: time, location (GPS module), air temperature, barometric pressure, water intake or discharge temperature, flow rate and any other specific requirement by adding the appropriate sensor modules. The data are transmitted via the Internet to the IJC. The IJC then automatically forwards a copy of the data to the appropriate governmental agency as well as the entity. This is very different from the way things are done today.

 The specifics of my design are:

• Indwell module (IM), a multitasking POSIX compliant computer module with 4Mb Flash ROM and 8Mb DRAM and an integrated TCP/IP stack, 56kbps V.90 modem or 10 Base T Ethernet and appropriate interface for the sensing modules.
   
• Programming can be carried out in a subset of ANSI C.
   
• Sensing modules are interfaced to the IM.
   
• Alarms and trip wires, as required, are included in the IM.
   
• IM and sensors are powered by a uninterruptible power supply that is itself plugged into the COA holder's power system (or solar and battery if remote).
  
  
• Telecom access is provided by COA holder's POTS dialup (or cellular if remote).
   
• All data is strongly encrypted by IM prior to transmission and decrypted with appropriate authentication at the IJC facility to ensure validity.
   
• Data are stored in a large database (i.e. Oracle or other robust database) running on a large Sun or other *nix based enterprise class computer and stored on a high speed RAID storage system at the USA IJC head office with a real time mirror of the entire network at the Canadian IJC head office.
   
• Network administration is centralized and carried out via secure communication with the IM (i.e. ssh telnet sessions).

What I have described above is not a daunting task. My own company is capable of designing, testing and producing the complete network and Indwell Modules in six months. On the second anniversary of such a project, the IJC and the public would have more useful data and knowledge than has been gathered in the last 100 years.

Isn't it time for a project like this to be implemented?

Released: October 22, 1999
iMP Magazine, http://www.cisp.org/imp/october_99/10_99taylor-insight.htm

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Another important article on the condition and future of the Great Lakes Basin and the St. Lawrence River was published on October 3, 2001 in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper. 

The article was written by Johanne Gélinas, Canada's Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. She and her staff are part of the Office of the Auditor-General. The The full audit that is referred to in the article appears at http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/environment.