Whole Earth Foundation | The Future of Democratized Infrastructure Management

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Problem Statement

When we examine the world broadly, we see a growing issue of aging infrastructure. Unfortunately, service providers governing these infrastructure assets have not always adequately maintained and renewed the facilities they manage. Take, for example, the aging water infrastructure of the United States, where it is estimated that approximately 1 trillion USD in capital investment will be required to replace all water pipes by the year 2050 (AWWA). Most water pipe infrastructure in the United States was installed between the late 1800s and 1970s, so most of it is at least 40 years old, with a large fraction being 60-80 years old. With the useful life of most types of water pipes somewhere in the range of 60-100 years, increasingly more of the existing pipes will have to be replaced.

Most citizens, however, are not fully aware of this situation or the reality that they will carry the burden of this cost in the form of increased water bills. This problem is not unique to the US; most of Europe has even older pipe systems, and similar issues exist in most countries worldwide.

Upon further examination of this problem, two fundamental characteristics specific to public infrastructure become apparent:

  1. Imbalanced access to information between service providers and citizens
  2. The lack of general incentive among parties to challenge the status quo

Infrastructure service providers are often managed by public institutions or are tightly regulated by government agencies; they often lack incentives to invest resources to incorporate effective and more efficient business practices. On the other hand, the general public, who are the beneficiaries of these services, have no means to be informed of the status of the infrastructure they utilize and have little incentive to prompt service providers or participate in activities to help them operate more effectively. These problems, if left unaddressed, can lead to significant disruptions in communities and result in substantial loss of valuable resources.

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Approach

To address this problem, the Whole Earth Foundation (WEF) proposes to utilize the Whole Earth Access (WEA) platform to connect general citizens (or information providers) and infrastructure service providers by providing access to a database containing detailed information about their infrastructure, and an ecosystem designed to facilitate communication and collaboration.

At its core is the environmental database, constructed by pooling together and geoprocessing multiple public and privately available data sources. Once normalized, the data will undergo additional processing to be made available in very high geographical resolution, which is not available in most publicly available datasets today. The data is also pre-cleaned, helping shorten the development time for machine learning projects by third-party developers. Information providers can interact with this data through a UI (e.g., mobile app), enabling them to stay informed about the infrastructure’s status around them, thereby helping alleviate the imbalance of information between them and the infrastructure service providers.

Furthermore, in addition to having access to data, citizens can actively support the database and, consequently, maintain the underlying infrastructure. A commonly shared limitation among existing environmental databases is the slow renewal of information - an average of 1-5 years of wait time. The WEA platform expects to address this by crowdsourcing data collection; Participants of the ecosystem will contribute data to help maintain an up-to-date database that infrastructure service providers can use to make better-informed decisions. Gamification mechanisms such as Quests will be explored to motivate participant engagement.

Participants will earn a blockchain-based token (Whole Earth Coin, hereafter WEC) for the provision of high-quality data, enabling a free and open marketplace that allows for the creation and efficient exchange of important data.

This approach is expected to help establish a system that promotes regular maintenance and renewal of infrastructure while raising the general citizens’ interest in the topic. As the public’s interest further grows, this momentum will accelerate the establishment of a society where citizens actively collaborate with institutions in joint-effort projects geared towards environmental improvement.

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The Envisioned Ecosystem

Whole Earth Access (WEA) comprises the following three key groups:

  • Developers : Developing software utilizing environmental data
  • Collaborators : Providing resources to support the growth of the project
  • Media Partners : Publicizing our vision and activities of the project to the world
  • Marketing Partners : Promoting our platform to their customers, and vice-versa, creating venues to use the WEF token for good and services

Among various infrastructure-related services with sustainability issues, the WEF will start first focusing on water. It is the most fundamental resource for all life and a critical resource for our society

In December of 2020, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched the world’s first water futures contract to hedge against the rising water prices and manage water supply risk. However, this is only a temporary solution and does not solve the fundamental cause of water shortages. Furthermore, there is a risk that market transactions will prioritize profits over ensuring adequate availability of water and public access to it. On the other hand, the WEF approach encourages social change in waterrelated infrastructure through public participation. In a sense, we are not just providing a platform for people to participate in public affairs, but we are creating a new collective form of economic collaboration.



Conserving And Creating Resources

An essential part of implementing the approach is a method to quantify the value of the information provided. For example, if a general citizen provided information that led to the elimination of a water pipe leak, he or she likely succeeded in helping save water that would have otherwise been lost. In other words, making this water now accessible can be considered the equivalent to the act of producing water. Therefore, the value of the information is derived from its ability to conserve and create resources, such as water.

Representation in this manner is a powerful method to conserve resources, maintain infrastructure and realize savings. For example, water that does not reach the consumer from the water supply station due to reasons such as leaks in distribution pipes is usually referred to as “nonrevenue water”. The amount of “non-revenue water” in Japan is equivalent to 1.6 billion USD per year – a significant amount of potential savings. Nonrevenue water is a widespread issue across several countries, including European and other Asian countries. But we can achieve much more if we understand and represent resource savings as the equivalent of resource creation.

Based on this method of quantifying the value of saved water resources, participants can earn tokens for their data contribution efforts. Part of the process for calculating the amount earned will involve using algorithms produced by third-party developers designed to predict factors such as the deterioration state of water pipes. For example, Fracta, with whom the WEF is partnered, has demonstrated the environmental database’s utility by developing state-of-the-art machine learning to predict water pipe deterioration states. By learning detailed environmental factors captured within the database, the model has allowed providers to accurately anticipate which water pipes have the highest risk of failure. This has permitted providers to successfully take preventative measures to address infrastructure problems before damaging bursts occur, fix invisible leaks, and save water. Algorithms like these are expected to evolve and become more advanced in the future, achieving improved performance. Simultaneously, the size, amount of details, and features of the database will continue to grow due to crowdsourced data collection
efforts.

We plan to coordinate with market partners to create avenues to use WEC token for goods and services.



Provision of Ecosystem Tools

To promote the use and adoption of the WEA platform, the WEF will be providing a set of tools for those looking to engage with our platform upon the launch of the network.

General citizens will be able to connect to and access the environmental database and contribute data. Participation with the platform and provisioning of data will be encouraged by exploring gamification mechanisms such as employing Quests to engage users in tasks. Users can then manage and utilize the utility tokens they earned in exchange for various tasks.

Infrastructure-related service providers will obtain access to the environmental database. This data will enable service providers to improve the efficiency of development projects by having access to the most up-to-date information maintained by the community. They will also be able to utilize products created by third-party developers.

Third-party developers will also have access to the environmental database. They will be encouraged to explore novel applications of data for projects which benefit infrastructure and the environment. The Foundation aims to work with partners to ensure all projects are aligned with the foundation’s vision.



Ecosystem Governance

Currently, WEC tokens are ERC20 Utility Tokens based on the Ethereum blockchain. We selected the Ethereum blockchain for its maturity as a decentralized platform offering robust security and access to various development tools. As we advance, the Foundation will actively search for a governance structure that better supports our goals and consider factors such as scalability and overall environmental impact.



Future Projects

As its name implies, the “Whole Earth’’ Foundation intends to focus on all infrastructure & environment-related projects around the world. As a starting point, we are focusing on water topics, but potential uses of the platform extend far and beyond water infrastructure.

Building energy-efficient buildings is another potential area of application for the environmental database. Many startups in this space are pursuing innovative data-based solutions to improve energy efficiency. However, many of these companies are working with insufficient data. The data is disparate for each company, making it impossible to perform a holistic analysis and generate optimal results. The WEA database could unite this field by providing a place where environmental data related to a large number of buildings could be collected, curated, and shared by companies working in this field and building owners alike. The WEC creates an incentive for the companies to exchange and share this data, which typically would be kept private, thus benefiting all the companies.

Many organizations working to improve a broad range of infrastructure segments face similar challenges, limited by the availability or lack of a quality dataset ready for analysis. The Foundation plans to help these organizations as partners of the ecosystem by providing shared access to the database created by the WEF community.



Team | Leadership & Core Members & Advisors

  • Takatsugu Kobayashi : CEO, Co-Founder
  • Mayumi Suzuki : CFO, Co-Founder
  • Hiroaki Sengoku : Fellow Engineer
  • Koki Sasagawa : Senior Engineer
  • Daiki Moriyama : Founding Advisor (Upcoming COO)
  • Takashi Kato : Co-Founder and CEO of Fracta, Inc.
  • *Yumiko Nishimura : Advisor
  • Jordan Breslow : Legal Advisor



ACCURATE INFORMATION



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