This environmental protection story focuses around GreenCollar, a dedicated natural resource management and environmental markets company that has developed over 30 projects that protect native forests on private lands. They currently have over 445,000 acres of forest under management in Australia and this figure grows every month. Using environmental markets, they protect these forests from deforestation, meaning technical survey, monitoring, evaluation and management systems not only have to be implemented but also audited by third parties and government agencies.
GreenCollar Group uses Fulcrum not only to collect data, but also as a navigation and feature validation tool. Some of the applications that they use Fulcrum for are:
The large volume of data collection and management as well as their need to complete projects efficiently was restricted by the delay between collecting data in the field and analyzing it back at head office to determine the next steps of their projects. They also had skilled staff performing tedious data entry tasks along with field teams having to manage the data to get it into a format ready for the data entry teams and database managers.
Data collection, observations, and general management of Green Collar’s projects now operate in real-time and this has changed the business significantly. Now if they detect a change from their remote sensing systems, or need data collected to make an instant decision, they get a team on the ground and have data instantly syncing back to head office enabling zero time-lag decision making.
Further to this, as data is syncing they can feed it into their database or report on an event immediately by exporting data in tables or pdf reports. This not only allows real-time management of information but has taken out several processes for data analysis and reporting.
The ease in which GreenCollar can create apps and collect data within them has meant that different managers can create apps for their specific needs. Whether it’s an experimental biodiversity assessment or the analysis of a feature of their project, Fulcrum has been simple enough to use however powerful enough to provide an advanced solution.
The capability to collect and analyze data in real-time is another huge benefit. “We can have field teams on the phone talking to us whilst the data they are discussing is popping up on our screen back at base. This allows us to operate dynamically with field staff as opposed to the old way of getting data in, analyzing it then informing them days later on what is required.”
A core technical strategy for their business is to harness technology and systems that make their projects more efficient and effective. Fulcrum has been a big part of delivering this strategy, providing them with a more advanced and real-time solution for their project monitoring, evaluation, and reporting systems.
