Environmental Monitoring Experts

These experts employ such new technological advances as satellite remote sensing, geographic information systems, nanotechnology and global positioning systems. These cutting-edge methods of mapping environmental impacts provide an important tool for other environmental professionals. The maps and data that these environmental monitoring experts create can be used for education and policy development, as well as for identifying the need for technological solutions that environmental engineers can develop and illustrating the need for additional data that environmental scientists can collect. With the creation of new technology to address the new governmental energy initiatives, more qualified professionals will be needed.

According to the website govtech.com, the Recovery Act will greatly spur the growth rate of the environmental technology industry.  The measure includes more than $4.3 billion earmarked for Smart Grid technology. Govetech.com says, “According to research from Energy Insights, the energy subsidies contained in the economic stimulus package will dramatically accelerate intelligent grid technology investment during the next four years, with the possibility of spending levels reaching $70 billion by 2013. This spending would span a wide range of technologies, including:

• --IT and communications hardware
• --Smart meters and other intelligent devices
• --Applications software used to operate the grid and enable active energy management by consumers
• --Software to manage huge amounts of meter and grid data
• --Advanced energy storage systems and grid-connected distributed generation resources
• --A variety of services required to plan, integrate, deploy and maintain the technologies.”