Alibaba big data to empower environmental monitors

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The cloud computing arm of Chinese tech giant Alibaba has announced a project giving environmental protection organizations, local governments – and eventually members of the public – access to live monitoring of sophisticated environmental phenomena.

Alibaba Cloud said 100 environmental protection organizations will be given access to the “ET Environmental Brain” under the scheme.

The logo of Alibaba Cloud. /Xinhua Photo

The system can quickly analyze satellite images and vast amounts of data concerning temperature, wind and air pressure to allow rapid decision-making.

Intelligent maps based on public data provided by NASA can show in real-time where there is pollution, meteorological disasters of overfishing, according to Wang Xiaoguang, head of ET Environmental Brain.

Alibaba Cloud is the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group. /Reuters Photo

Inner Mongolia’s Environmental Protection Bureau is already benefitting from the technology. It is helping the north China's autonomous region to assess and regulate companies’ emissions and energy use.

Since introducing the ET Environmental Brain in June, east China’s Jiangsu Province has been using it to manage nearly 25,000 enterprises.

Alibaba Cloud did not specify when the public would be get access to the ET Environmental Brain, but said it hoped the system would allow them to help supervise environmental developments.