Environmental Resilience Technology: Sustainable Solutions Using Value-Added Analytics in a Changing World

Global climate change and associated environmental extremes present a pressing need to understand and predict social–environmental impacts while identifying opportunities for mitigation and adaptation. In support of informing a more resilient future, emerging data analytics technologies can leverage the growing availability of Earth observations from diverse data sources ranging from satellites to sensors to social media. Yet, there remains a need to transition from research for knowledge gain to sustained operational deployment. In this paper, we present a research-to-commercialization (R2C) model and conduct a case study using it to address the wicked wildfire problem through an industry–university partnership. We systematically evaluated 39 different user stories across eight user personas and identified information gaps in public perception and dynamic risk. We discuss utility and challenges in deploying such a model as well as the relevance of the findings from this use case. We find that research-to-commercialization is non-trivial and that academic–industry partnerships can facilitate this process provided there is a clear delineation of (i) intellectual property rights; (ii) technical deliverables that help overcome cultural differences in working styles and reward systems; and (iii) a method to both satisfy open science and protect proprietary information and strategy. The R2C model presented provides a basis for directing solutions-oriented science in support of value-added analytics that can inform a more resilient future.

全球气候变化和相关的环境极端是理解和预测社会 - 环境影响的需求，同时确定了缓解和适应的机会，以支持更具依赖的未来，新兴的数据分析技术可以利用从卫星到传感器到社交媒体的跨性别数据来源的日益增长的地球观察。在本文中，我们提出了一个研究与商业化的模型，并通过行业伙伴关系来解决邪恶的野火问题，我们系统地评估了八个用户的人物的39个不同的用户故事。我们发现，研究与商业化是非琐碎的，并且学术 - 工业伙伴关系可以促进这一过程，只要（i）知识产权的明确决定，有助于克服工作风格和奖励系统的文化差异；增值分析可以为未来提供更有弹性的未来。