What's "under the hood" of the Clean Air Act of 2018?

HOUSTON - Feb. 16, 2018 - PRLog -- Simplicity drives the new draft Clean Air Act (see link below), but the engine under the hood is technology.  Technological advancements such as A.I. and remote sensing will not only make simplicity possible, but will make the impossible simple.

Google's CEO last week said that artificial intelligence might prove to be more impactful to human history than fire or electricity.

This is not a far-fetched statement from Google's CEO

The AL Law Group has been focused on what new technologies such as A.I. could mean to environmental management and simplifying environmental legal compliance.  In fact, the AL Law Group has been working with one of the world's foremost experts in A.I. technology, Flutura, to help introduce the technology into the air quality management arena.  The application of A.I. technology, along with new air monitoring technologies, we believe will revolutionize air quality management over the next 25 years—greatly simplifying environmental compliance, reducing costs to companies, and improving environmental performance.  This new frontier is in its infancy, but standing on the edge of this frontier and looking out at the expanding horizon that's unfolding is jaw-dropping.

Here is a quick example

Artificial intelligence is already being used to predict when equipment will break.  The technology could also be used to predict not only when it will break and why it will break; but how long it will be broken, the emissions associated with the breakdown, how those emissions would impact monitors in the region based on billions of historic and real-time data points, meteorological data, atmospheric loading, etc.  All of this data could be fed in real-time back to the operator for the operator to then decide how to best handle the equipment.  On the remote sensing side, once a molecule of pollution is detected, A.I. could inform the operator where the molecule is likely coming from given the various chemical processes occurring at the plant (or whether it was even coming from the plant), where A.I. is showing the last predicted equipment or process break-down to have occurred, the wind-direction, historical comparisons of data and past events when the molecule was detected, and other parameters that the human-mind has difficulty making connections with in real-time—giving the operator real-time information upon which to help them make a decision.

Google just announced that it has created an App that uses A.I. to predict when flights will be delayed.  Google will apparently know when flights will be delayed before the airlines know they will be delayed–using billions of historical and real-time data points and complicated algorithms that analyze connections between the data.  Mind-blowing.  It is not a stretch of the imagination that an App could be created to predict when and where the next emission event will occur, the costs involved, if and how to mitigate the event, and its likely impact on air quality should a release occur.

Knowledge is power.  And when an operator can be given more knowledge in real-time of what is occurring, the potential impacts and costs, how those events have been mitigated in the past, etc.—all based on billions of historical and real-time data points and the various relationships between those data points that are impossible otherwise to see and process in real-time . . . and then this system is learning from itself as it goes . . . the power given to operators begins to border on omniscience.

The economic and environmental benefits to companies and the environment that are sure to come with simplicity and technological advancement are astounding.  For more information on the Clean Air Act of 2018 and how it unleashes the power of technological innovation through simplicity, please see the "Clean Air Act of 2018 (https://allawgp.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=611347d...)".  And to discuss how A.I. and the AL Law Group's environmental compliance simplification tools can help you to reduce your costs and improve environmental and economic performance at your facility, please contact the AL Law Group at (281) 852-8064 or info@allawgp.com.

Jed Anderson is the editor of TexasEnvironmentalNews.com.  Mr. Anderson is a principal attorney with the AL Law Group–and a former attorney with Baker Botts and Vinson & Elkins and an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law School where he taught the Clean Air Act.  In addition to his legal practice, Mr. Anderson has become a national leader over the past 15 years and a hub for Clean Air Act reform efforts–writing articles, gathering people and ideas, speaking across the country, writing a book, helping to lead national efforts to transform the Act, and even himself re-writing the Act (for more information, see www.cleanairreform.org).