Industry

''This page is about the intersection of industrial systems and machine learning in the context of climate change mitigation. For an overview of industry as a whole, please see the Wikipedia page on this topic.''

[todo redo intro]Industrial production, logistics, and building materials are leading causes of difficult-to-eliminate GHG emissions. Fortunately for ML researchers, the global industrial sector spends billions of dollars annually gathering data on factories and supply chains – aided by improvements in the cost and accessibility of sensors and other data-gathering mechanisms (such as QR codes and image recognition). The availability of large quantities of data, combined with affordable cloud-based storage and computing, indicates that industry may be an excellent place for ML to make a positive climate impact. ML demonstrates considerable potential for reducing industrial GHG emissions under the following circumstances:


 * When there is enough accessible, high-quality data around specific processes or transport routes.
 * When firms have an incentive to share their proprietary data and/or algorithms with researchers and other firms.
 * When aspects of production or shipping can be readily fine-tuned or adjusted, and there are clear objective functions.
 * When firms’ incentives align with reducing emissions (for example, through efficiency gains, regulatory compliance, or high GHG prices).

In particular, ML can potentially reduce global emissions by helping to streamline supply chains, improve production quality, predict machine breakdowns, optimize heating and cooling systems, and prioritize the use of clean electricity over fossil fuels. However, it is worth noting that greater efficiency may increase the production of goods and thus GHG emissions (via the Jevons paradox) unless industrial actors have sufficient incentives to reduce overall emissions.

Machine Learning Application Areas

 * Optimizing supply chains and logistics
 * Improving materials
 * Designing for carbon-conscious products/processes
 * Optimizing energy usage
 * Minimizing wastage

Background Readings

 * Rebitzer, G. et al. Intro to life-cycle analysis (2004)
 * Gao, J. et al. Google’s white paper on ML for data center optimization
 * Gustavsson, J. et al. Intro to food waste (2011)
 * Wikipedia - Intro to Industry 4.0
 * Carbon180 - Building a New Carbon Economy (substantial overlap with carbon sequestration and agriculture)

Journals and conferences

 * Journal of Cleaner Production
 * Industrial Management Journal
 * Energy and Buildings

Societies and organizations

 * The BlueGreen Alliance's Clean Economy Manufacturing Center (USA) helps American manufacturers and construction firms improve efficiency and sustainability
 * Carbon180 New Carbon Economy Consortium is focused on carbon capture and sequestration, including agriculture and forestry
 * Ellen MacArthur Foundation (transition to the circular economy) helps (mostly large) manufacturers consider the entire life cycle of their products

Libraries and Tools

 * The Materials Project
 * Inorganic Crystal Structure Database
 * SciFinder (paid)

Data

 * UCI Machine Learning Repository datasets, e.g. “Concrete Compressive Strength”