Enviro-Actions: a preventive management tool designed for industrial port areas of the world

For several years, research studies have shown that anthropogenic activities can impact the environment. It is therefore essential to understand how environmental stressors may influence ecosystems and biodiversity, especially in industrial and/or port areas where many activities are cooccurring. From a perspective of sustainable development, economic development and diversification of industrial port areas are essential to maintain a stable economy, and it is imperative that decision-makers have access to scientific support adapted to their specific needs, allowing them to ensure the preservation of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, as well as the health of communities and workers. In addition, considering that the majority of industrial port areas are located close to urban areas, a management model integrating data at a high resolution becomes essential.

Twenty years ago, impacts of industrial development within and outside industrial-port areas attracted little attention from the population, and information capacity was limited by the tools of that time. Nowadays however, social acceptability requires transparency and communication of environmental information involving actors with a neutral point of view and a scientific credibility. In this context, INREST has developed a preventive environmental management tool, the Enviro-Actions Model, that integrates collection and transmission of big data in near real-time using artificial intelligence for data analysis as well as the transmission of preventive alerts to stakeholders at different levels. These actions allow environmental management to act in a prevention mode rather than after possible perturbations have occurred. This model is being implemented in Quebec (Canada), in the Port of Sept-Îles, the largest mineral port in North America and the second among Canadian ports in terms of annual volume of operations, and in the Port of Saguenay and Rio Tinto Saguenay. With successful deployments since its creation, the Enviro-Actions Model is proposed to other harbour administrations within and outside Canada, supporting proactive ecological management within a vast network of collaborators, and has been endorsed by the international intergovernmental commission of UNESCO as a featured project for the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.