person’s behavior.

GeoScope has been incubating in me for 35 years, appearing from time to time as thread in my projects, a theme in my communications. In that time, I’ve come to understand the importance of what I call “generative feedback” – performance feedback that changes behavior; I’ve built tools and processes that drive that change at various scales; and I now propose to contribute those tools to a carefully seeded process to realize Bucky’s vision for GeoScope – a compound eye for humanity – by developing, deploying and knitting together regional sustainability dashboards into a dispersed yet integrated global web of trending tools.

In 1948 J.M. Juran, one of the fathers of Total Quality Management, observed that: “To be in a state of self-control, a person should be provided with knowledge about: what he or she is supposed to do, what he [or she] is actually doing, and what choices he has to improve results wherever necessary.... If any of these three conditions are not met,” Juran noted, “a person cannot be held responsible.” In 1962, Buckminster Fuller proposed GeoScope, “an instrument that can inform humanity about its invisibly trending evolutionary challenges – and do so in time to allow them to satisfactorily anticipate and cope with inexorable events.”

Current technology enables trend analysis, display quality, and interactive experience that Fuller could only dream about. Emerging technology enables dynamic, real-time and near-total information access and transparency – and generative feedback systems that can shift behavior, much as Prius drivers inevitably change driving habits in response to their dashboard’s real time gas mileage readout – regardless of incentives.

Planetary challenges require deployment of these interactive trending tools as broadly and rapidly as possible. Distribution of engaging, reality-based, planetary trending through distribution channels – from the Weather Channel and USA Today to web portals and nightly news feeds – can change the paradigm of environmental and economic reporting, and accelerate effortless behavior change toward sustainability and regeneration.

• Solution and plan

Clear visual feedback on “how are we doing” in relation to various sustainability goals is one of the most effective drivers of change. It can acknowledge successes, making our individual “drop in the bucket” actions add up to something significant, highlighting slippage, and encourage cooperative competition – between neighbors, businesses, cities – to do better.

The proof is in the Prius. People’s driving behavior changes – not because of fines, financial incentives or exhortation, but because of live, relevant, visual feedback on the impacts of their actions.

This initiative will provide that sort of feedback – for the results we care about – at every level of activity – from households and business to cities, counties, and Bay Area as a whole – and eventually from regions to nations?

It will realize Bucky’s vision for GeoScope, developed through a dispersed, ubiquitous network of specific applications that weave together regional sustainability dashboards to produce the whole.

The system will
- provide real-time perspective on key environmental, economic, demographic and social trends, and
- present trends in a simple, intuitive, interactive, visual interface that enables users – regardless of level of sophistication - to observe trends and impacts, and look for correlations of trends that will
- add insight, expand degrees of freedom, nurture different conversations, and
- engender new behaviors

(The power of performance comparison, in Ken Boulding’s words, is that existence is proof of the possible.)

It will be
- Transparently scalable - from home, neighborhood, city, region; from company, to supply chain to industry association; from neighborhood association to NGO; from all of these to planet
- Ubiquitous - available in high and low tech forms from web to WAP phone to mass media, from classrooms to laundromat bulletin boards to regional science museums)
- Simple, engaging and (dare we say it) fun
- Behavior-changing – and conversation changing

It will enable trending of
• Energy
• GHGs
• Water
• Jobs
• Economy
• Air quality
• Health
• Ecosystem functionality
• Housing
• Biodiversity
• Traffic
• Sprawl
• Equity
• Any relevant trends for which data can be found

Natural Logic will contribute the anchor technology, Business Metabolics. This web-based performance tracking system streamlines the collection, analysis and use of performance trending data. It combines a robust data architecture, able to model and manage the entire “bill of materials” of industrial society, with designed-in ease of use that makes it accessible to non-technical users.

Business Metabolics has been used with businesses for sector evaluation and collaborative benchmarking; with cities and regions for economic development strategies with “regional metabolism assessments;” and with state government (for technical assistance and regulatory innovation).

But it was designed with GeoScope in mind.

Business Metabolics is:
Simple and intuitive—As one executive observed: “Our people would actually use this!”
Efficient and economical— “automagic” data collection for speed, accuracy and economy
Flexible and scalable— easily “ rolls up” results and compares performance across resource classes, facilities, regions, divisions, companies, industries and supply chains
Robust and secure—rock solid security at any scale
Standards based—
Versatile—runs in any browser, on any operating system
Adaptable—“layer on” any relevant metadata, attributes or concerns

Initial data sets will be obtained from utility companies, regulatory agencies, research organizations, public data sets. Then companies and organizations will be invited to contribute data (with appropriate preservation of confidentiality). Streamlined web interfaces and open APIs will encourage and facilitate participation.
• Financing & economic viability

Development of the core software has been privately financed by Natural Logic Inc, which will contribute an irrevocable, non-commercial license to the project.

We have proposed an initial regional deployment in the nine-county, 100+ city San Francisco Bay Area, with an initial pilot anchored in the City of Oakland, where RSD has been adopted as a core project of the Oakland Partnership (a public-private initiative of the Chamber of Commerce.

Development costs (budgeted at ~$600,000 through launch) will be funded by grants from corporate sponsors, foundations and public agencies; discussions are underway with PG&E (energy utility), East Bay MUD (water utility), the Bay Area Council and Silicon Valley Leadership Group (business networks), several Bay Area cities, and the California Department of Conservation.

Ongoing operations with be sustained by multiple funding channels: advertising, subscription fees from participating companies and license fees from media channel partners for the free basic service; user fees for advanced functionality.
• Taking it to the next stage

Natural Logic will lead this effort in collaboration with allies: the Oakland Partnership, Sun Microsystems, NASA and others (including invited participants such as Google, PG&E, California Academy of Sciences, California Department of Conservation and others).

Natural Logic is a strategic sustainability consulting firm, helping companies and communities prosper by embedding the laws of nature at the heart of enterprise, and building clients’ profit, resilience and competitive advantage through exceptional environmental performance. We help our clients clarify, escalate and engage their aspirations; assess and improve their processes and productivity; uncover the hidden profit opportunities embedded in “waste” of all kinds; and put those opportunities into practice.

Gil Friend, Natural Logic President and CEO, is an internationally regarded expert in helping organizations incorporate “sustainability” as a key strategic driver of their economic performance — and have it contribute powerfully to business, environmental and social goals. “Nature’s ecosystems have spent 3.85 billion years building efficient, complex, adaptive, resilient systems,” he observes. “Why should companies reinvent the wheel, when the R&D has already been done?”

A systems ecologist and business strategist with 35 years experience in business, communications and environmental innovation – including life-changing involement in World Game 1972 and 1973 -- Mr. Friend is the inventor of Natural Logic’s Business Metabolics™ key performance indicator (KPI) system.
• Exemplifying 'trimtab

RSD/GeoScope is comprehensive -- in its workings, scope and aspirations

It is Intrinsically anticipatory -- projectively tracking critical trends and needs; identifying and assessing long term consequences of proposed solutions.

It is ecologically responsible by making visible the invisible patterns that sustain us, and by efficiently and effectively shifting behavrio toward greater ecologically responsibility

Its transparent, annotatable open source, open standards approach is Verifiable and invites rigorous empirical testing.

It is designed for replicability, scalability and extensibility, using open platforms, any data, any relevance sets, by anybody

It is achievable. The core technology is built, partners are gathering and deployment is proceeding

The BFI Challenge award and funds would validate and accelerate this process.

References:
http://www.natlogic.com/new-bottom-line/v15/27-v15/213-new-bottom-line-volume-15-4
http://www.natlogic.com/new-bottom-line/v13/25-v13/193-new-bottom-line-volume-13-2
http://www.natlogic.com/new-bottom-line/v13/25-v13/194-new-bottom-line-volume-13-3