tos takes mere seconds. That’s certainly helped improve the quantity and quality of data we produce.” Advantage #5: Technology Helps Scientists Keep up with Changing Regulations This year’s changes to WOTUS definitions further complicate the already-challenging tasks of water planning and management, often calling into question who has jurisdiction over wetlands. Technology that gives scientists access to current regulations at their fingertips can help them navigate these changes while also streamlining the processes. Haney experienced firsthand the ability of technology to navigate changing regulations. “When the Nationwide Permit 12 rule (NWP 12) came out, a lot of our projects that we had been working on or were in the process of permitting were impacted,” she recalls. “In some cases, the rule changes led to our project plans changing slightly, and as a result we had to go out and re-delineate some areas. That was a huge disruption to construction and permitting schedules. Our goal was to make edits without losing any time, and without updated technology, it would have been a struggle to meet those deadlines.” Advantage #6: Technology Helps Businesses Better Serve their Clients Finally, technology that streamlines and speeds the wetland delinea- tion process enables AEC and environmental consulting firms to better serve their clients by improving efficiency. “If we can have teams out there who can complete 10 or 15 wetland delineations in a day rather than 8 or 9 wetlands in a day, that’s much more progress for our cli- ents, says Schlicht. “When our clients – many of them in the oil and gas industry – are schedule heavy, technology enables us to meet their deadlines more effectively and efficiently.” “We’re constantly trying to provide the fastest turnaround times to aid in the construction and development of sites,” Haney adds. “As popu- lations grow, energy demands grow; we’re constructing more and more utility lines, solar farms, wind farms, and the like. Our goal is to give back our deliverables as fast as possible and the more technology can aid in that, the more we can deliver on time for our clients.” Wetland Delineation: Then and Now Schlicht began environmental consulting work in 2001 and says that at that time, doing a wetland delineation involved taking handheld paper
Advantage #3: Technology Leads to Fewer Mistakes In addition to speeding up the quality review process, technology helps eliminate mistakes caused by human error while transferring field data to reports in the office. The right technology improves data accuracy whether the scientist is inputting data directly into the app and relying on a third party to interpret a handwritten form, or when working with error-prone, unreliable apps that take consultants’ focus off their sci- ence. Ultimately, according to Kurtis Schlicht, Technical Director in the Houston Office – Impact Assessment and Planning Community at Environmental Resources Management (ERM), this can mean fewer legal ramifications resulting from erroneous data. “This platform adds validity to the work that we do. No longer are we at risk of someone misreading our handwriting and entering data incorrectly. Our data is substantiated by this type of technology.” Accuracy is particularly important in wetland science because there’s such a fine line between what does and does not require a permit. “Small differences matter, from making sure you know where property boundaries are to pinpointing how close you are to pipeline or utility line right-of-ways. Being off by just a few feet can make a huge differ- ence on a project,” explains Haney. Advantage #4: Technological Advances Yield More and Better Data More data means better data, and the ease of technology encourages scientists to collect more data. For example, the manual process for collecting and documenting photos was quite tedious before the advent of technology to record and geotag photos. “You’re far more inclined to take more photos if you know you don’t have to write down the photo number and find the point on a map, put a dot on the map, and correlate the photo with GPS at the end of the survey,” says Durish. “That’s fine for one or two pictures but when you get into the hundreds or even thousands of photos, it can be very tedious. With smartphone technology, we can collect an endless number of photos, dump them into a folder and save them to a spot on the map. Later, when we want to find photos from a particular point on the map, pulling up those pho-
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csengineermag.com
november 2020
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