The role of environmental monitoring in protecting natural resources

1. The role of environmental monitoring for businesses

Environmental monitoring plays an important and diverse role for businesses. Below are some of the main roles of environmental monitoring activities for businesses:

- Compliance with regulations and laws: Environmental monitoring activities help businesses to monitor and ensure that their activities comply with regulated standards and pollution limits.

- Environmental risk management: Environmental monitoring helps businesses to assess and manage environmental risks related to their operations. This includes identifying potential risks and taking measures to minimize negative impacts on the environment.

- Building reputation and corporate image: Businesses can use environmental monitoring activities to increase their reputation. Commitment to environmental protection and sustainable management can create trust from customers, shareholders and the community.

- Feedback and operational improvement: Environmental monitoring data help businesses to track their environmental performance. By analysing data, they can identify locations or activities that cause pollution and suggest improvements.

- Meet the requirements of customers and partners: More and more customers and partners are interested in whether businesses carry out environmental monitoring activities or not. Providing information about a business's environmental performance can help create trust and better cooperation.

- Sustainable development and additional value creation: Environmental monitoring can help businesses to create more sustainable solutions and products. A focus on environmental management can lead to saving resources, minimizing waste and creating additional value based on sustainable development.

Environmental monitoring plays an important role in ensuring that businesses comply with regulations, manage risks and make environmental-related improvements. At the same time, it also creates opportunities to build reputation and sustainable development for businesses.

2. The importance of environmental monitoring for environmental protection activities

Environmental monitoring plays an important role in environmental protection and ensuring the sustainable development of society. 

- Assessing the current state of the environment: Environmental monitoring provides accurate and reliable data on the current state of the environment. Thanks to the data and information collected, environmental management agencies will better understand pollution levels, change trends and the impact of human activities on the environment.

- Detect and deal with pollution: Environmental monitoring allows us to detect pollution problems early and determine their origin. This helps us to be able to quickly respond to emergency situations such as environmental incidents to avoid causing heavy damage.

- Monitoring the impact of human activities: Environmental monitoring helps to monitor the impact of human activities such as industrial production, transportation, agriculture and construction on the environment. This is the basis for making resource management decisions and setting development orientations to achieve a balance between economic development and environmental protection.

3. Environmental monitoring data for practical applications

In Vietnam, there have been many environmental protection projects and programs implemented by using environmental monitoring data. Below are some examples:

- Air quality monitoring program in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City: These 2 large cities have deployed a network of environmental monitoring stations to monitor the air quality. Data collected from these stations helps to warn of air pollution risks, while also supporting decisions on traffic limits, emissions management and the development of environmental protection measures.

- Water resources management project in the Mekong Delta: This project uses data on water levels, rainfall and water quality to manage water resources in the Mekong Delta. This data helps to predict droughts and floods and to ensure water supply for agriculture and domestic use.

- Forest management and protection program in important areas: The use of environmental monitoring data helps to monitor forest status and biodiversity in important areas such as Can Gio mangrove forests and forests in the Bach Ma mountain. This data provide important information to inform about measures to protect and maintain the precious ecosystems.

- Gac Ma sea and island nation management project: Data on sea temperature, sea level and sea water quality have been used to manage Gac Ma sea and island nation. This is an example of how environmental monitoring data can be used to protect and maintain marine resources.

- Renewable energy and climate change monitoring program: Renewable energy and climate change monitoring projects use data on solar and wind energy and climate indicators to make informed decisions on clean energy development and climate change control.

- Policy orientation and management decisions: Data from environmental monitoring is an important source of information for policy orientation and management decisions. They help leaders and decision-makers to have reliable information to establish measures to protect the environment, treat pollution and promote sustainable development.

- Monitoring the effectiveness of environmental protection measures: Environmental monitoring allows to assess the effectiveness of implemented environmental protection measures. If there are signs that measures don’t lead to the achievement of goals, this information can help to adjust and improve the strategy.

- Raising community awareness: Data from environmental monitoring can be used to raise community awareness about the state of the surrounding environment. This information helps attract community participation in protecting the environment and contributing to relevant decisions.

Environmental monitoring is an important tool to understand and manage the environmental situation. It plays an important role in maintaining the balance between human development and protecting the natural resources for the future.

4. Application of information technology in environmental monitoring activities

Information technology plays an important role in improving and optimizing environmental monitoring activities. Below are some ways to apply information technology in environmental monitoring activities:

- Automatic monitoring network: Use of sensors and automatic equipment to continuously collect data on the quality of air, water, soil and other environmental factors. This data is transmitted to the management center via the network, helping to monitor in real time and automatically warn about environmental conditions.

- IOT and cloud connectivity: Internet of Things (IoT) technology allows devices and sensors to connect with each other and to transmit data to the cloud. This helps to create a flexible and remotely accessible environmental information management system.

- Big data analysis: Using Big Data technology to analyse and process large amounts of environmental monitoring data. Data analytics can help to identify patterns and trends, predict environmental change, and make smart environmental management decisions.

- Mobile applications: Mobile applications can help users to easily access information about the quality of their surrounding environment. Users can monitor environmental indicators, receive pollution alerts, and to contribute data from different locations.

- Geographic information system (GIS): Use of GIS to display environmental monitoring data in the form of maps and interactive maps. This provides a better understanding of the spatial distribution of environmental factors and helps in effective resource management.

- Environmental modelling: Use of simulation software to create models of environmental conditions and to predict the impacts of human activities. This can assist in making environmental management decisions based on scientific predictions.

- Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning: Use AI and machine learning to analyse and understand environmental monitoring data in depth. This can help to find hidden patterns in data and make predictions about future environmental conditions.

5. Difficulties and challenges in environmental monitoring activities

Environmental monitoring activities face many difficulties and challenges due to the complexity of the environment and monitoring work. In the following are listed some key difficulties and challenges:

- Cost: Environmental monitoring equipment and related infrastructure are often expensive, especially for continuous monitoring systems or extensive monitoring networks. Maintenance, calibration and servicing costs can also be high, contributing to increased financial burdens on organizations and governments.

- Performance and reliability of equipment: Monitoring equipment must be guaranteed to be reliable and have high performance to ensure the accuracy of collected data. Malfunctions in equipment can result in inaccurate or incomplete data collection.

- Data quality and standardization: Monitoring data must ensure high quality and comply with international standards. Calibrating, checking and ensuring data quality is a challenge for large monitoring systems.

- Harsh environments: Monitoring devices often need to operate in harsh environments such as mountains, seas, deserts or areas with extreme weather conditions. This poses a challenge to the durability and stability of the devices.

- Big data management: Environmental monitoring systems can collect large amounts of data continuously. Managing, storing and processing big data requires complex infrastructure and techniques.

- Data analysis and understanding: Monitoring data is often very complex and diverse. Analysing and understanding from this data requires expertise in environmental science and data analysis.

- Monitoring network management: Monitoring networks must be carefully managed to ensure that data is collected continuously and accurately. Technical problems, broken equipment, or improper monitoring can cause gaps in data.

- Environmental change and climate change: The environment and climate can change rapidly and therefore make forecasting and responses difficult. These changes can also affect the accuracy of forecasts and models.

With the function of providing information, environmental monitoring is an important link in providing solutions and strategies in environmental protection activities. Water environment monitoring, air environment monitoring, wastewater monitoring, labor environment monitoring are the main items when performing environmental monitoring. Therefore, it is necessary for professional and highly specialized environmental units to carry out the steps when conducting environmental monitoring to avoid information errors.