First do no harm!

How can Information Technology contribute towards restoring the nature back?

"First do no harm" was the key note speech delivered by Mr.Karan Grover on the first day of
Cognizance - an annual cultural festival of IIT Roorkee. We were presented with some astonishing
facts, images and videos as to how the nature's gifts - air, water, land, forests, wildlife - have been
deteriorating, as a result of continual human actions, because of which the complete ecological balance
is getting affected. A video footage showed a polar bear trying to find his home, which disappeared as
a consequence of global warming, but will eventually end up being dead unable to do so. That one hour
of presentation, which consisted of many such footages, had moved me so much so that I started
wondering what best we could do to improve our situation and enable the coming generations enjoy
nature as much as we do or even better.

Extremely disconcerting issues like increase in the average temperatures, plummeting ground water
levels, unpredictable annual rainfall, deadly pace of ozone layer depletion and polar ice-caps' melting,
substantial adulteration of soils with chemical fertilizers, irrepressible increase of deforestation,
overshot usage of conventional fuels are the results of human activities, making our planet an
increasingly unfavorable place to live in, for any form of life existent. If we don't immediately address
any of this, we might have little chance to salvage the irrevocable damage to our habitat the Earth.
Having hailed from IT industry, I couldn't help myself but think what carbon foot print does the IT
industry as a whole has. And, is there any way that information technology could help, if not
completely save, our planet from the seemingly inevitable crisis by getting into the fundamentals of our
daily routine? Well, the good news is that there is!

These days, it is quite often seen or heard about the Smart Planet initiative by IBM. Though this
dates back to the year 2008, I feel the relevance of this is only growing day by day making the task at
hand to be perceived as having the prime importance. The ones that caught my attention were The
roads to smarter planet and Green Buildings among others like Advanced Water Management,
Smarter Fuel Resources, Mastering carbon management: Balancing trade-offs to optimize supply
chain efficiencies etc.

If one refers to the link www.ibm.com/green, one can observe that we can infuse intelligence into any
system to make it smart going by IBM terms. What does this have to do with the topic at hand? In
fact a lot of it! Smart systems mean reduced waiting time, reduced wastage, reduced fuel consumption,
effective shipping and transportation space and increased renewable energy resources consumption etc,
everything contributing to the efforts of making the planet green. And what is the proof? Refer to the
below heads Smarter roads and Green buildings, which are excerpts taken from IBMs website
www.ibm.com/green

Smarter roads:
In Stockholm, a dynamic toll system based on the flow of vehicles into and out of the city has reduced
traffic by 20%, decreased wait time by 25% and cut emissions by 12%. In Singapore, controllers
receive real-time data through sensors to model and predict traffic scenarios with 90% accuracy. And
in Kyoto, city planners simulate large-scale traffic situations involving millions of vehicles to analyze
urban impact. All of this is possible because cities can infuse intelligence into their entire
transportation system - streets, bridges, intersections, signs, signals and tolls - which can all be
interconnected and made smarter. These new traffic systems can improve drivers commutes, give
better information to city planners, increase the productivity of businesses and raise citizens quality of
life. They can reduce congestion, shrink fuel use and cut CO2 emissions. Our rapidly urbanizing planet
depends on getting people and things from here to there. In the 20th century, that meant freeways from
state to state and nation to nation. In the 21st century, smart traffic systems can be the new
milestone of progress.


Green buildings:

IBMs green datacenter in Boulder, Colorado, has replaced energy-greedy air-conditioning with
cooling from the air outside, which can be used for up to 75% of the year, contributing up to 50% in
annual energy savings. And for a glimpse of what is possible through a smarter approach, consider the
Green Spaces office park in Delhi, India, on which construction will begin this year. It aims to be the
worlds greenest and most energy-efficient commercial building, through such innovations as 100%
waste and water reclamation, instrumentation and interconnection of all systems, recharging ports for
electric cars, and ventilated chairs. It even plans to grow its own oxygen and remove harmful
compounds from the air through the strategic use of indoor vegetation - which doesnt just help the
environment; it also helps people think and be more productive. An earlier prototype was rated the
healthiest building in Delhi by the Indian government. In the 20th century, people marveled at what
could be built by filling our buildings with steel. In the 21st, lets see what new heights - and reduced
footprints - we can achieve by filling them with intelligence.

What might be the result of these kinds of initiatives?
Now that most of the organizations (IT and non IT, government and non government) are growing
conscious of their carbon foot prints and that one of the biggest IT services organizations has started
wearing the green thinking cap, this would essentially mean others would have joined or will soon
join the league. For example, Apple Inc (through eco friendly products and lean management), Amul
India (through planting saplings), ITC (by reforestation), Coca-cola (by coming up with pet bottle
made from plants), etc. started to make their own contributions. One might argue, there are still
problems with the new green initiatives of above mentioned and many other organizations. But the
best part is that this problem is concerning everybody at every level thereby triggering something
positive towards finding the solution.

As was seen in the above avenues, where IT can be of help, I am only positive that regardless the
industry, IT can act as a hub and bridge in every other industry with respect to the green initiatives,
doing which serves the prime cause at hand rejuvenating our planet. Im just trying to say, synergy is
all what is needed now, for the rate at which we have been damaging our habitat. It is not just Telecom,
Automobile, Agriculture, Steel, Paper or any one of industries that do their part individually; they will
have to do it together with one collective objective revive life into the planet Earth, making 1+1=11!
I just dream of a day, where there wont be any need for any firm or company or a country to buy or
trade carbon credits!

I hope we will come out of this crisis soon. I hope I embrace nature as my great grand fathers did. I
hope my next generations wont have to see an animation movie to visualize animals, waterfalls, rivers,
lakes, valleys, glaciers and forests. I hope the Earth would be as green as it was during the age of
Homo sapiens. I hope. Because, hope is a good thing, in fact best of things!