How IoT is an essential tool against climate change

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The term ‘climate change’ is ubiquitous. From industries including agriculture and mining, to the cars we drive and the clothes we wear; even, in recent years, running power-hungry AI models which caused Microsoft to admit it didn’t meet its carbon emissions targets this year – it’s arguably difficult to escape mention of how climate change is shaping our world. Because of the IoT industry’s own familiarity with the power of what technologies can do coupled with a trend towards collecting and analysing data, I wanted to explore how this industry in particular is stepping up. The main challenge was the vastness of the industry and the technologies the Internet of Things encapsulates. Industrial IoT; healthcare IoT; consumer IoT (which may be more commonly recognised as referring to IoT devices like smartphones), each are an example of IoT technologies in practice. As for devices – Edge computers; wireless modules; sensors, the list could go on. For the sake of brevity and containing this technical article within a few thousand words, I chose to focus on the relationship between network and satellite technologies, and sensing devices in keeping them connected, looking more specifically at the real-life applications of environmental monitoring and water metering. These were picked for their recognition of how climate change is affecting our environment, and our precious resources. What I discovered – and hope you will gain from reading this, too – was the positivity and belief of every expert I spoke to, in the power of IoT. The question of what kind of network technology, what kind of protocol, what kind of sensing device can be left up for debate. But the overall belief that the IoT industry can, for example, support companies in deploying smart water meters over a wide area network so they can

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