'Smart Brain' aids in environmental protection and safety management

Nantong Economic and Technological Development Area, or NETDA, in East China's Jiangsu province has been working to build "Smart Brains" for its chemical industrial park to achieve unified management of environmental protection and safety data.

In the first half of this year, the development area established an emergency environmental information database, inputting information such as emergency supplies, equipment, specialized emergency response teams, and emergency experts into the platform. This allows an emergency rescue team to be put together within 15 minutes and emergency materials and equipment to be dispatched within 30 minutes, which would swiftly arrive at the scene for rapid disposal.

In recent years, the development area has invested over 20 million yuan ($2.7 million) to build an integrated comprehensive management platform for environmental protection, safety, and emergency response.

Through the establishment of an inventory of environmental risk sources, companies can accurately report the number, distribution, and storage of hazardous substances, as well as emergency plans for environmental risk sources on the platform.

"By setting up real-time monitoring devices in various chemical enterprises, the system will promptly notify the person responsible via SMS upon detecting issues related to things such as emissions," said Zhu Bin, deputy director of the ecology and environment bureau of the development area.