Written in the first year of digital transformation of environmental industry

In recent months, the discussion on the digital transformation of the environmental industry in China has intensified and become the focus of public and media attention. Various views and opinions have emerged, triggering in-depth thinking and discussion.

On October 19-21, 2023, the China Environmental Health Association held the first China Environmental Sanitation Industry Digital Development Conference and the sixth China Smart Sanitation Summit Forum in Shenzhen, at which the "China Environmental sanitation Industry Digital Development Report (2023)" was released.

On November 23-24, 2023, Tsinghua University Environmental iot, Big Data Joint Laboratory and Green Nest Environment held the 7th Environmental Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence Conference in Beijing, at which the GPT in the environmental field was released and ten hot spots and trends in the construction and operation of ecological environmental big data were discussed.

On December 2 and 5, 2023, E20 Research Institute and E20 Water Network Solid Waste Network respectively issued "Why when it comes to environmental industry intelligence, pain points are always unclear" and "Environmental people are intelligent, take a few steps?" It points out that the four pain points of "difficult, expensive, slow and chaotic" restrict the process of environmental industry intelligence, and gives eight steps towards intelligence.

It can be said that the digital transformation of the environmental industry has attracted widespread attention, which undoubtedly provides a strong driving force for the digital transformation of the environmental industry, so that the environmental industry in China's industrial digital transformation tide to keep up with the pace of The Times. Some people call 2023 the year of the digital economy, and I think it is also the year of the digital transformation of the environmental industry. Where is the digitalization of environmental industry? The end of the Yuan needs an answer, here to throw out a target for everyone.

Characteristics and status of digital transformation of environmental industry

Compared with other industries, the digital transformation of environmental industry is mainly characterized in the following aspects:

(1) There are many subjects, including the government, enterprises and the public, in contrast, other industries usually have only one main service object, either enterprises (such as machinery manufacturing) or the public (such as e-commerce); (2) There are many indicators, a wide variety of environmental pollutants, each pollutant has its own specific emission standards, and the environmental industry has a large amount of data, which is difficult to collect and process; (3) The factors are complex. The digital transformation of the environmental industry involves multiple factors, including human factors and objective environmental factors. In addition, it also involves the processing process and many links of the upstream and downstream industrial chain. At the same time, market behavior and political factors may also have an impact on the digital transformation of the environmental industry. In China, the former environmental protection department is responsible for environmental protection work, and now the Ministry of Ecological Environment is responsible for ecological environment work, but the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has been in charge of environmental sanitation, and there is a cross-management problem in the system. This further adds complexity to the digital transformation of the environmental industry.

The digital transformation of the environmental industry has been relatively slow. From the perspective of the proportion of digital economy in GDP, the industry average is 41.5% in 2022, while the environmental industry is only 16.5%. In terms of the breadth and depth of digital transformation, the manufacturing industry is at the forefront, and intelligent control has been popularized and penetrated into the whole process of production, such as Sany Heavy Industry and other enterprises; The environmental industry is still in the visualization stage of data detection and waste collection and disposal. From the perspective of the importance of industry leaders, many industry leaders, experts and the head of the enterprise are leading the digital transformation, and formulated the industry digital development report or white paper, such as the chief Zhang of Haier Group in the home appliance industry to personally do the top-level concept design. In the environmental industry, only the China Environmental Health Association has issued a white paper on the development of smart sanitation. It can be seen that the digital transformation of the environmental industry is not only slow, but much slower.

When it comes to digital transformation, environmental protection is lagging behind sanitation. The transformation of environmental protection is mainly the application of digital technological means to the supervision of water and gas treatment. Compared with the traditional environmental monitoring method, it can not only ensure the detection accuracy of data and increase the transmission amount per unit time, but also improve the data acquisition and transmission speed, realize the real-time transmission and processing of data, and can simultaneously view and supervise the actual situation of the front line. The transformation of sanitation mainly focuses on the supervision of garbage classification and disposal, especially the networking and visualization of garbage classification and collection and transportation, which has been popularized in many cities, and some cities and enterprises have realized the whole process supervision and optimization of the production process of garbage disposal, such as the intelligent management and control of garbage incineration and anaerobic links. Through intelligent means to enable, to promote the garbage classification work towards a new stage of intelligent management of "can be perceived, quantifiable, evaluable, and monitored".

The current situation of digital transformation of environmental industry can be summarized as the widespread existence of information islands and the initial stage of development. The automation facilities of some enterprises are not perfect, the information construction of some enterprises is not in place, and the internal network of some group enterprises has not been opened. Some urban sanitation network facilities have not been opened between regions, the "one network office" and "one network management" two networks of urban management have not been integrated, the role of urban cloud brain has not been fully played, and there is a certain gap from the national requirements of "horizontal connection to the side, vertical open up the national, provincial, and municipal three levels of network" to achieve "one network management". The implicit problem behind this is that the practice of digital transformation is ahead of the theoretical research, and inadequate cognition and inconsistent standards are two important factors affecting the digital process.

Driving force of digital transformation of environmental industry

The source of digital transformation of environmental industry comes from the cost reduction and efficiency increase of enterprises. The purpose of government supervision is not only to improve the work efficiency of government staff, but more importantly, to promote the digital transformation of enterprises, improve the production efficiency of enterprises, achieve energy conservation and emission reduction, and promote the sustainable development of society. To meet the needs of the three parties on a network platform is an urgent problem in front of us. The "network" (" one network "in the environmental protection documents issued by The State Council and" one network management "in the urban management documents) must not only meet the needs of government supervision, but also help enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency, facilitate public use and accept public supervision. In particular, it is necessary to allow enterprises to change from passively accepting supervision to actively taking the platform, and achieve cost reduction and efficiency increase while accepting supervision.

The national development strategic plan and relevant policy documents and speeches of the top leaders have pointed out the direction for the digital transformation of the environmental industry. As early as 2016, the Ministry of Environmental Protection issued the "Overall Plan for the Construction of Ecological Environment Big Data", the overall structure is one mechanism (work), two guarantees (system and technology), and three platforms (ecological environment big data cloud platform, management platform and application platform). In 2020, The State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on Building a Modern Environmental Governance System, requiring a sound environmental governance supervision system to form a ledger, a network, and a window for ecological environmental data.

In addition to the strategic support and guidance of national policies, social organizations such as industry associations, chambers of commerce, research institutions, universities, and consulting companies are also important forces to promote digital transformation. China Environmental Health Association established the Smart sanitation Professional Committee in 2015, continued to promote the intelligent and digital development of sanitation work, and achieved remarkable results, such as the annual China Smart Sanitation Summit Forum (suspended for 3 years during the epidemic), The publication of the White Paper on the Development of China's Smart Sanitation (2020) and the Report on the Digital Development of China's Sanitation Industry (2021); The Joint Laboratory of Environmental iot and Big Data and Green Nest Environment of Tsinghua University have hosted the Environmental Digitization Conference every year since 2015 (suspended for 2 years during the epidemic), and released the "China Ecological Environment Digitization Research Report and China Ecological Environment Big Data White Paper" (referred to as "Environmental Big Data Report") every year since 2019. For promoting the digital transformation of China's environmental industry has made significant contributions.

Fortunately, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University and Tongji University, which are among the top ten universities with environmental majors, have all carried out research in the direction of "environment + Internet" and achieved leading results. For example, the large model practice and exploration work of the environmental GPT application Laboratory of Tsinghua University is in the forefront of the world. More importantly, we have a huge team of thousands of enterprises and hundreds of research institutions (see "Environmental Big Data Report"), joined the ranks of the digital transformation of the environmental industry, which will become the practitioner and leader of the digital transformation of China's environmental industry; There are digital transformation of traditional environmental enterprises, such as Qingdao Tianren Environment successfully transformed into 2023 China's Top 500 Industrial Internet; There are cross-bank expansion of traditional information companies to join, such as Ali to expand waste incineration and Huawei to enter smart cities.

In addition, the enterprise groups represented by Beijing Water, Capital Environmental Protection, Yangtze Environmental Protection, Guozhen Environmental Protection, etc., have made a lot of investment and effort in their main businesses and achieved phased results; Small and medium-sized enterprises represented by Tianren Environment, Haocang system control, intermodal environment, and Futai Information Technology continue to cultivate in various subdivisions and become the mainstay of promoting digital transformation; The cross-border operation represented by Weipaige Smart water, Kuwa Technology, Guozhen Wisdom, Eridi Information Technology, etc., is expected to become a rising star in the environmental industry; In addition, Beijing Zhiborui invested in the preparation of the "Internet of Things + Ecological environment Governance Project Feasibility Study Report" (2020), which provides new ideas for the integrated innovation and integration application of ecological environment Internet of Things. Networking and platform work requires joint efforts, digital transformation requires cross-border team wisdom, connected through "this network", for our common future, welcome more industry elites and people of insight to join, gather all forces, and jointly promote the digital transformation and upgrading of environmental protection industry.

How to understand the "web" that underpins digital transformation

The focus on digital transformation varies, depending on the starting point and purpose of the audience. The common focus is on the methodological steps and future trends of digital transformation, and the opinions and ideas given are also influenced by the personal experiences and backgrounds of the followers. Relevant entrepreneurs, experts and scholars at home and abroad have reached a consensus that digital transformation is a master project, including product development, organization construction and other entire process agility. Only by personally participating in the specific work of digital transformation can we understand and grasp what digital transformation is and how to do it.

Of course, the relevant theoretical and methodological research is necessary, but the results in this area are few, incomplete and immature, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on the industrial digital transformation theory and methods, and make overall planning for the digital transformation of the environmental industry, including infrastructure, platform construction, technical products, data standards and operation and maintenance methods. Especially the industry platform, the national policy has clarified the realization of "one network management" (or "one network"), such as the "Implementation Opinions on Building a modern environmental governance System" (2020) and the "Guidelines for the Construction of a National Integrated Government Big Data System" (2022) issued by The State Council and the relevant documents issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Ministry of Housing. It is not clear who will build and manage this network, including the construction and operation mode, the main body and the way of cooperation, the source of funds and the recycling method.

In terms of who will build this network, the government has not clearly designated, there are two main reasons: (1) the policy is not allowed, the need for open bidding; (2) There is no successful experience and no clear conditions. Now that other industries have successfully built application network platforms, why does the government still not organize bidding or open elections? I think the reasons may be: (1) The successful ones are those that the government encourages and supports the leading enterprises in the industry, such as dual-cross-platform; (2) The environmental industry is of public nature, and to meet the needs of government regulation, the construction, operation and maintenance of network platforms should be led by the government; (3) The production process of enterprises served by the environmental industry network platform includes complex chemical and biological reactions, which is difficult to construct and maintain, and there is no successful experience and model.

However, the national policy plan to achieve "one network management" has a deadline, such as the completion of 100 waste free cities by 2025, and the basic realization of the national urban solid waste treatment at the national, provincial and municipal levels and the horizontal "one network management" to the edge. From this point of view, this network should have been built long ago, at least there should be a prototype, or clearly realize the "one network management" method. The current situation is that these are not clear, the analysis of the reasons may be: (1) do not know how to build or achieve this network, so we have to wait; (2) The leader is not aware, and there is no one who has been aware to offer advice to the leader.

Whatever the reason, I put forward my own immature idea: considering the government's policy of purchasing services from third parties, the main body of network platform construction and operation and maintenance must be enterprises. What is the nature and size of the enterprise, whether it is a leading enterprise or a small and medium-sized enterprise; Is it an enterprise that does environmental business, or an enterprise that does Internet, Internet + environment, environment + Internet. Previous experience and lessons tell us: the construction of the industrial Internet industry platform needs to be completed by the industry elite, to be familiar with the industry know-how and can not have business competition between peers and the main users of the platform. In this way, it is more likely that the "environment + Internet" leading enterprises (more likely is private small and medium-sized enterprises), combined with the "environment + Internet" and "Internet + environment" enterprises in various subsectors, to form a business community, division of labor and cooperation, together to complete the construction and operation of the environmental industry Internet platform.

Model innovation of digital transformation of environmental industry

As far as the main body of platform construction and operation and maintenance is concerned, it is generally believed that the head enterprise is large and strong, which is conducive to the construction and operation and maintenance of the platform. The practice of dual-cross-platform construction and operation in China has proved that the head enterprise as the main body has obvious defects, the most prominent is that the peer is afraid of key data and trade secrets disclosure and dare not use the platform, and the competitor is even worse. In contrast, small businesses are small, have fewer competitors, and can transform quickly, especially exotic unicorns, which may be a viable option. Of course, small businesses also have their drawbacks, mainly the lack of economic power and industry resources, which can be solved by financing and other methods.

In addition to the above analysis of what kind of enterprises are suitable for industry platform construction, entrepreneurs also need to have industry feelings, open mind and altruistic spirit or mentality and front-line experience. The construction process of the platform is long, the investment is big, the difficulty is big and the risk is big. It is difficult to persist without feelings, and it is difficult to invest and share openly without altruism, including all-round investment in capital, time, energy and physical health, as well as cross-border knowledge learning and skills mastering. It is difficult to succeed without first-line experience, and even if it is done, it is not useful or can not be used. These have been proven by the pioneers.

In terms of the mode of platform construction and operation and maintenance, is it a company to build it itself, or to cooperate with the "environment + Internet" enterprises in various subsectors? Because no enterprise can fully grasp the know-how of each subsector, it is necessary to adopt the model of co-construction, from the cooperation of the platform construction to the continuous iteration of the operation and maintenance process, throughout the whole process. Because there are more subjects involved, and every enterprise may have such problems in the development process, the sorting out and dynamic regulation of the co-construction relationship has become very important. The competent government departments need to organize guidance, and in the process of selecting enterprises, the relationship between the leading enterprises and various enterprises should be clarified first.

In terms of the process of platform construction and operation and maintenance, it is necessary to build the network platform in advance for everyone to use, or to build while using. Platform construction is an agile development process, and it is traditional thinking to build it well in advance, but it is difficult to work in reality. It is necessary for the government to make unified planning, encourage enterprises to be the main body of industry platform construction and operation and maintenance, design the industry platform architecture in accordance with the needs of "one network management", formulate industry standards, build and open the platform base, encourage various subdivided platforms and application software to connect the industry platform, and provide services and support for users, and develop win-win cooperation mechanisms. The gradual formation of "one network management" in the market, here we understand why the government has not made it clear how to build this network.

As far as the cognition of leaders is concerned, all leaders have relatively strong cognitive ability. Recently, due to the need to edit the "Digital Development Report of China's sanitation Industry", we conducted an interview survey of entrepreneurs and big coffee in the industry, everyone is the tide of The Times, have their own ideas and practices for digital transformation, reflecting the high vision of entrepreneurs. I also learned a lot from each of them, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you! While giving me confidence and encouragement, I also have some concerns. In the communication, I found that very few entrepreneurs can take the lead themselves. If there is no successful experience to learn from, your ideas and decisions may not be feasible.

In my personal opinion, no leader is all-powerful, everyone has their own cognitive limitations, and I have not met any leader whose views and practices on digital transformation are completely feasible. Including myself, although I have learned a lot, and read almost all the authoritative official publications in this area, and have personally done more than 10 years, I have learned more about the lessons of stepping on the pit and failure, and I just have a little understanding of how to do digital transformation, and I have the courage to write it out for everyone's reference, but also accept everyone's criticism and correction. If the leader's decision is wrong, the loss is not only the breakthrough brought by digital transformation, but also an opportunity for development, and even gradually out in the process of big reshuffle.

Digital environment facilities construction and operation and maintenance model innovation

How to accelerate the construction of smart cities and play the function of urban cloud brain, reduce duplicate investment, open up the industrial chain as soon as possible to achieve the integration of industries, need to be consistent with the integration of the national big data system, make full use of existing network facilities, that is, on the basis of existing network facilities, in accordance with the requirements of "one network management", to upgrade and transform.

Who will do the upgrading, seemingly simple, implementation will encounter a lot of new problems. Especially the consensus of leaders at all levels, there are mainly three schemes or viewpoints: (1) the original network system can be competent, or the original service provider can be competent by simple transformation; (2) The original network system is not competent, it needs to be demolished and rebuilt, and the planning, design and construction are carried out in full accordance with the requirements of "one network management"; (3) Upgrade the original network system and re-implement the overall plan step by step. The latter two schemes are theoretically feasible, both need to re-select the service provider, considering the actual situation should choose the third.

Which service provider to choose again? It is necessary to take a clear inventory of the current service providers, which can be divided into three categories: (1) traditional network companies that do government management; (2) Specialized network companies that do some production process supervision and operation services (that is, environment + Internet, or Internet + environment); (3) Several big environment group companies set up their own information or smart environmental protection teams to serve their own company's intelligent and digital upgrading.

The problem now is that the three models corresponding to these three types of service providers can not meet the practical needs, the main reason is that the content and functions of "one network management" are not capable of an existing company. In particular, the operation and maintenance process requires continuous development and iteration, which cannot be supported by the traditional model of one-time delivery + after-sales service of Party A and Party B. Under the unified leadership of the government, the traditional network company should be entrusted to purchase services from a third party. Starting from the construction or upgrading plan design, the original traditional network company should be organized to cooperate closely with professional network companies in various subsectors or modules, and a joint venture or partnership team should be established. Organize and clarify the corresponding operation and maintenance management mechanism, especially clarify the responsibility and right relationship between the government and enterprises and enterprises.

This is a new mode of construction and operation and maintenance, in the case that the actual demand is faster than the theoretical research, according to the general experience and practice, it is necessary to boldly try, do pilot first, and promote after success. In the process of timely summary, and extract the theory and method to guide practice. This requires the government to develop pilot and promotion plans, conduct regulatory and institutional protection innovation research to support new application scenarios, and introduce relevant incentive policies. In particular, the innovation of organizational institutions and management mechanisms involves different government departments and multiple entities involved in operation and maintenance, and also needs to meet the needs of agile and dynamic management of processes, including the survival of the fittest and continuous iteration of operation and maintenance entities.

Therefore, the digital transformation of the environmental industry is difficult and slow, and leads to the widespread existence of information silos. Not only the internal network of the enterprise has not been fully opened, but also the urban sanitation network facilities have not been fully opened up between the two networks of urban management, the "one network communication office" and "one network management" have not been integrated, the role of the urban cloud brain has not been fully played, and there is a certain gap between the national requirements of "horizontal connection to the side and vertical opening up the national provincial and municipal three-level network" to achieve "one network management". The implicit problem behind this is that leaders have inadequate cognition and inconsistent standards, because no leader is all-powerful, and everyone has their own cognitive limitations. What impressively is that in the process of research and investigation and learning, I rarely find that the understanding of the connotation of "one-network management" and the construction and application plan are completely consistent, nor do I encounter that the views and practices of digital transformation are completely feasible. It can be said that the current situation of digital sanitation is not optimistic, and the main obstacles are the limitations of decision-makers' cognition and the decentralization of regulatory functions.

The achievements of enterprise digital transformation

The core of digital transformation is the change of corporate culture. In other words, whether an enterprise's digital transformation is successful depends on whether the culture of the enterprise has changed in theory. In practice, the cost reduction and efficiency increase results of digital transformation are used to prove it (the average efficiency increase is about 20%). In the process, it depends on the changes in productivity and production relations, as well as the changes in consciousness, organization, process, method and mode. The main manifestations are as follows:

(1) from "machines replace people in part of operation activities" to "human-machine coordination in the whole process of production"; (2) From "post-recording analysis of the physical world" to "real-time perceptual simulation deduction of the digital world"; (3) From "management system" to "operating platform"; (4) From "product function priority" to "consumer experience priority"; (5) From "operation + maintenance" to "whole industry chain + whole life cycle operation and maintenance"; (6) Enterprise data from "a small number of individuals" to "full coverage"; (7) from "product competition between enterprises" to "ecological competition between industrial chains"; (8) From "relatively stable" to "continuous iteration"; (9) From "strong control" to "self-discipline and self-drive".

In particular, Huawei's successful experience in digital transformation is worth learning from. For example, an integrated team of business design and IT development is set up to break its own boundaries, aggregate external resources, promote change in a project way, break through the constraints of transformation, plan, build and operate digital applications in a productized way, and evaluate the effect of digital transformation in three dimensions: (1) capacity building (delivery documents); (2) Value realization (business value); (3) User perspective (user experience).

The characteristics of the environmental industry determine the difficulty of its digital transformation. Considering the public nature of the environmental industry, its transformation needs the guidance and promotion of the government. In addition to the formulation of relevant laws and regulations, it is also necessary to introduce relevant encouragement policies. At the same time, the role of various industry associations and organizations should be played to jointly compile relevant standards and standardize the development of the industry.

Compared with other industries, the action of the competent departments of the environmental industry is also relatively lagging behind, I believe that there are deep reasons, because they do not understand, it is unable to comment. What can be done is to learn from the experience of successful people and do what we can. In addition to their own work, but also need to stand in the perspective of the industry and platform, digital transformation requires us to reconstruct a digital twin virtual world, and through the network platform and the real world interaction, we need to participate in the division of labor to complete.

At present, what we need to solve most is to improve the cognition of decision makers. As the masters of traditional resources and rules instinctively refuse to give them up, leading self-revolution becomes the key to transformation. It is difficult to convince leaders, and asking leaders to personally participate in the transformation process is an effective way. The second thing that needs to be solved is to break through the three boundaries of property rights, rules and credit, which is the premise of achieving interconnection and trading.

After the realization of digital transformation, every environmental enterprise and every environmental person is an individual or individual in the ecosystem, with its own ecological niche, interconnected and collaborative. The primary stage of digital transformation has completed from 0 to 1, and the next iteration will complete the continuous development from 1 to N. For our common future, we need to work together, connect, interconnect and interact, and develop in symbiosis. On behalf of Tianren environment and national wisdom, I am willing to share and cooperate with you to create a better future.