February 18, 2009
The Center
for Sustainable Innovation, based in Thetford Center, Vt., is a
non-profit that tackles "research, development, training, and
consulting for, and with, companies around the world interested in
managing and improving the sustainability of their operations." In
January 2009, the company announced Corporate Water Gauge, a solution
for measuring and reporting water use in the context of sustainability.
Executive Director Mark W. McElroy, Ph.D., answered our questions about
the offering and how GIS technology and data are involved, as well as
how you calculate measurements related to sustainability.
Directions Magazine (DM): What is the Corporate Water Gauge? It's not a
product, not a piece of software, but a service?
Mark McElroy (MM): The Corporate Water Gauge (CWG) is an
integrated offering that consists of: (1) a water metric embodied in a
spreadsheet; (2) a GIS tool for measuring water supply and use in
watersheds; and (3) a consulting service for teaching and/or assisting
with use of the whole package. Perpetual, non-exclusive licenses to use
the CWG are granted free of charge to clients who first engage us to
help them use the tool at a single site, or be trained (in-house) on
how to use it themselves. (Minimum fees apply in either case.) After
that, our clients are free to replicate and use the CWG as they see
fit, with or without our assistance. (Note that in the latter case,
clients must provide their own GIS and spreadsheet systems.) In sum,
our primary deliverables at the conclusion of initial consulting and/or
training engagements consist of: (1) a spreadsheet file which embodies
the CWG metric (populated with site data, if applicable); (2) sample or
actual graphical depictions of watershed areas (see Figures 1a, 1b and
1c on last page); (3) sample or actual GIS shapefiles: watershed data,
census data and precipitation data; and (4) a methodology for using the
CWG on a going forward basis.
DM: The Corporate Water Gauge is considered a sustainability
quotient. What is a sustainability quotient and how does it differ from
other measures of sustainability?
MM: A sustainability quotient is a general measurement model for
expressing the sustainability performance of an organization (i.e. a
general specification for organizational sustainability metrics).
Denominators express impacts that an organization should or should not
have on social and/or environmental conditions in the world (based on
the size of the organization and what those conditions actually happen
to be), and numerators express what an organization’s impacts on the
same conditions have actually been. Other sustainability metrics are
numerator-only in form. They report impacts on social and/or
environmental conditions in the world, but fail to connect such impacts
to actual social and/or environmental conditions in the world. They
might tell us, for example, how much water a company has used at a
particular site in the past year, while failing to report such use
against relevant background conditions (such as, are water supplies in
the relevant areas scarce or abundant?). Thus, unlike sustainability
quotients, numerator-only metrics are context free. Full-quotient
metrics, by contrast, put impacts in context. In that regard, they are
much more useful and informative.
DM: Can you briefly explain the four pieces of information that go
into calculating the Corporate Water Gauge quotient?
MM: The main ingredients are: (1) water inflows and outflows by
source/sink per facility; (2) relevant watershed delineations; (3)
precipitation volumes by watershed; and (4) facility population counts.
DM: What is the final product? A single value? A series of values
for different geographic areas (local sustainability, regional,
global)? A report?
MM: Sustainability quotients produce sustainability scores that can
be plotted on a sustainability performance scale. In the case of the
CWG, any score of less than or equal to 1.0 signifies sustainable
performance (i.e., net water consumption is no greater than a company’s
proportionate share of available renewable supplies). Obviously, net
water use by facility is also reported. All such data can also be
aggregated on a geographic or organizational basis. Blended scores in
this regard are easily produced. Associated reports provide discussion
and analysis of everything.
DM: How does GIS come into play in calculating and communicating
results of a water use analysis? Can you share what technology is used?
(Is this basically one big GIS analysis? It sounds as though it could
be.)
MM: GIS plays a vital role in our method, but no more than the
underlying metric does. Indeed, the metric, which is embodied in a
spreadsheet, takes data produced by GIS and computes the actual
sustainability score. The computation it makes is complex, and is based
on cutting-edge sustainability theory and practice, and international
standards for measuring and reporting the sustainability of corporate
water use. GIS simply allows us to initially compute available water
supplies on a per capita basis in the watersheds of interest. To do
this, we are using a standard configuration of ArcGIS and a broad range
of datasets.
DM: What are your data sources and how "fine grained" are they? The
product PDF references census data - how new? Where does the
precipitation data come from? Is it an average of time? Over what
geographic area?
MM: Not surprisingly, this varies by location. Thus, we approach
it on a case-by-case basis, although multi-site solutions at the
country level are liable to be fairly consistent. Analyses are confined
to relevant levels of watershed analysis, the determination of which is
a step in our method.
DM: What sort of organizations are target users for the Corporate
Water Gauge?
MM: Any organization, with one or more sites, that uses water
resources and is faced with the need to manage, mitigate or report such
use can benefit from this tool. Corporate sustainability managers,
plant or facility managers, environmental managers, or anyone charged
with managing and reporting corporate water use in any way should
consider it. While other tools might do a reasonably good job of
measuring net water use, the CWG takes measurement to the next level
and measures use against available supplies, thereby producing
context-based sustainability measures, as well. Corporate
sustainability managers familiar with the Global Reporting Initiative
(GRI) will find the CWG particularly helpful.
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| Interesting type analysis. Water use and the responsible stewardship of that water has become a huge issue for the golf industry, particularly for facility owner/operators. This doesn't appear that it could be easily applied to golf courses as is but could it possibly be modified and used for golf? Any interest in discussing the subject? Jim K |
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| Hi Jim: Happy to discuss this further with you. I see no reason why our metric couldn't be applied to a golf course. Golf courses are facilities; they use water; and they discharge wastewater of one sort or another. To the extent that there are any surface or groundwater contamination issues to take account of, our tool will not determine or quantify them, but will reflect them in its calculation and scoring algorithm once they are determined by others. We regard water contamination as a form of water consumption, since it effectively removes water from available supplies. What are your thoughts on all this? Regards, Mark |
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