ASA in the News
2010
Providence Business News (& PBN.com) - January 11-17, 2010
Modeling to Solve Marine Mysteries ASA, the environmental-modeling firm aggregates marine data, writes software and then uses it to model environmental impacts. Providence Business News' Chris Barrett illuminates ASA's company history and unique scienctific consulting services and technology solutions business after interviewing its founders. By Chris Barrett, PBN reporter
Since 1979, ASA has carved out a niche of aggregating marine data from around the world, writing software and then using it to model the environmental impacts of development. Guided by a panel of city-appointed climate experts from NASA and Columbia University, a report predicts that by 2080 New York will have the climate Raleigh, N.C., has today. By their estimate, it will be about seven degrees Fahrenheit warmer and sea level may be two feet higher, unless polar ice sheets do melt. But such forecasts can be overtaken by new data. "You have to continually update plans as the models get better and the knowledge gets better and the unknowns become known." “Our job is [taking] all this data and making it understandable to a broad range of stakeholders,” said CEO and President Eoin Howlett, who joined the company in 1989. Three University of Rhode Island professors and a graduate student started the company 10 years earlier. Led by ocean-engineering professor Malcolm Spaulding, the four saw an opportunity to apply the data-gathering and modeling techniques from academia to the private sector. The company’s first contract was with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which asked ASA to explore the environmental benefits of proposed projects that would limit the overflow of Providence’s combined sewer and stormwater system. |
