Sustainability Platform

Sustainability Platform

Summary

Technology Mission

Create an open collaboration platform that encompasses transparent and authenticated innovation for global sustainability challenges. The platform will be similar to an X-Prize in offering individuals or groups the ability to meet a challenge while adding the mechanism to measure the value of the contribution’s impact via blockchain to modular, micro and macro, aspects of the challenge. All solutions within the platform will provide data into a unified database that significantly enhances the collaborative ability of its multi-disciplinary participants. The results of the data shall provide constant efficiencies to sustainable project versions that will be available to any entity that chooses to participate, agreeing to contribute all their implemented project’s data and enhancements back to the platform. The eco-system of participants will encourage and attract great minds to collaborate in delivering projects that will provide optimal solutions to energy, water and food generation.

Principal Process

The Sustainability Platform is optimal in continuously delivering the most efficient solutions to complex global challenges, ideally positioned for the intricacies of projects such as vertical farming. Each component of vertical farming, its solar technology, energy storage, water capture and reuse, lighting, hydroponics, permaculture, crop yield, etc, have a challenge that can be defined to the smallest module. For example, if the total budget for version 1.0 of a custom built (static) vertical farm is $15 million, the individual challenge allocation for the solar component to produce the required power of ‘x’ megawatts at 2.91 cents per kilowatt hour could be a $1 million prize. This prize is provided via the network’s blockchain, releasing to the winner a contract and currency that is verified / authenticated by the entire network. The gamification of version 1.0 of the solar solution can be applied to future buildings and collaborated upon by other users to produce version 1.1 and so on. This can then be integrated with, for example, the LED technology that will supply plants the necessary light at optimal efficiency, or the solar storage solution to produce a combined ‘fork’ module version. This is where the platform’s application and database would be able to transparently keep track of contributions and versions. A similar principal has been proven in the software development community via the measurable success of GitHub’s code repository platform.

Data Visualization

An integral technological aspect of the Platform shall be its effective use of data visualization, offering users the following interactive representations :

• The ability to view real-time data from sensors via interactive HTML5 graphics. For example, clicking on specific crops to bring up water and light consumption, previous yield or real-time energy conversions from specific photovoltaic panels.
• User contributions to specific solutions, where a specific IP can be visually linked to authenticated users.
• Most importantly, the visualization of data in overlapping scientific fields. This is where this Platform will provide a unique edge, bringing a new paradigm in transparent collaboration.

Information Systems

The Platform shall be built on Amazon Web Service, offering utility computing for optimized scalability, performance, redundancy and cost. Servers will dynamically facilitate to the Platform’s growth on high availability cloud architecture. All content will be served via CDNs while adhering to the highest security standards.

The Platform’s database will reside on DynamoDB‎, a fast and scalable noSQL solution that caters to the complex requirements of the Node.js application.