As CEO of Hitachi Vantara, Gajen helps solve clients’ problems by bringing to bear Hitachi’s unrivaled industrial expertise across sectors.
You might not think saving the world’s tropical rainforests is a data challenge, but the urgent task of protecting the last remaining two million square miles of forest is precisely that. What is more, the challenge holds vital lessons for anyone tackling a data project with seemingly insurmountable odds.
Illegal logging and deforestation.
Logging, much of it illegal, strips the planet of more than 32 million acres of natural forest every year. If you ever imagined literally trying to find a needle in a haystack, then you might be able to contemplate what it is like to find a chainsaw in forested areas the size of Australia.
Even if you could position a listening device where it could protect every tree, the scale of the rainforests means it would take weeks for preservationists to reach an illegal logging site. One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second, so the speed and accuracy of interventions counts.
At the current rate of decline, it is estimated that tropical rainforests could be wiped out as functioning ecosystems in less than 100 years. Maybe your data projects are sounding easy by comparison?
