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Man-Made Water Warriors that are Controlling Plastic Pollution in the Rivers
CIO Review
About 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic waste are estimated to be afloat in our oceans worldwide and polluting them, out of which 90 percent of the debris that originates from 10 prominent rivers. Several environmental groups have designed innovative programs to intercept the river plastics before it enter the sea
FREMONT, CA: Rivers have been the source of life since the emergence of human civilizations. From Indus to Tigris and Yangtze to the Nile, rivers bore the burden of keeping these civilizations alive. A millennium later, hundreds of millions of people still depend on these rivers to grow food, quench their thirst, and make a living. Yet, without acknowledging its importance in human life, people are destroying the planet’s river systems.
The world’s rivers are subjected to unprecedented pressure from contamination, damming, diversion, and are over-exploited. The population interested to take charge of this situation is enough to arrive at a solution for plastic pollution in rivers. Still, the lack of adequate initiatives is continuing to devour our rivers.
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According to the Environmental and Science Journal's report in 2020, about 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic waste are estimated to be polluting the oceans, out of which 90 percent of the debris originates from 10 prominent rivers. Many countries pursue projects without regard for their cross-border or environmental effects. Several environmental groups have designed innovative programs to intercept the river plastics before it enters the sea.
Interceptor, by The Ocean Cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup launched its river plastic cleaning device, the Interceptor that claims to catch more than 100,000 Kilograms of plastic per day. The Interceptor is an autonomous solar-powered floating device that utilizes barriers systems stretching across the width of the river to collect the plastic debris. These barriers are arranged diagonally to each other to re-route the plastic waste towards the mouth of the Interceptor.
The trash moves onto a conveyor belt, which autonomously collects and dumps the waste equally in one of its six garbage bins. A dashboard depicting the performance of the Interceptor immediately alerts the nearby operators to empty the garbage bins once they are full. At present, Interceptors are used in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, with more planned for the Dominican Republic, and the U.S.
The Bubble Barrier, by the Great Bubble Barrier and Waternet
Waternet is a system that manages Amsterdam’s waterways by deploying five garbage boats that scoop out 42,000 kilograms of plastic each year. Waternet also uses an invisible barrier made of bubbles to collect the trash that ends up in the water.
The Bubble Barrier filled with compressed air is fixed to a perforated tube and laid across the bottom of the canal. It runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, forming a screen that captures the floating debris. Plastic waste collected by the Bubble Barrier is tested by the Plastic Soup Foundation to estimate plastic components caught in the trash.
Mr. Trash Wheel by Clearwater Mills and the Waterfront Partnership
An anthropomorphic trash interceptor Mr. Trash Wheel has googly eyes and its own Twitter account. It has been cleaning the Jones Fall River in Baltimore since 2014 by scooping out the garbage. In 2016, a female-gendered Professor Trash Wheel and in 2018, a gender-neutral Captain Trash Wheel were launched to join the fleet. Since then, the three trash interceptors have together cleaned and collected about 907 tonnes of garbage from the river. Waterwheels power the vessels and the river current, as well as the solar panels for backup, are enabled on the system. Barriers collect the floating debris, and the wheels power the conveyor belts so that the transfer of plastic waste is easily carried out from water to the bin.
Floating Boom by CLAIM and New Naval
Being one of the five Cleaning Litter by Developing and Applying Innovative Methods in European Seas (CLAIM) projects run by the EU, a floating boom is installed at the mouth of a river for filtering out plastics. Presently the technology is installed at the Kifissos River in Athens, Greece.
The system the Floating boom works on, is a Marine Litter Containment mechanism that manually manages litter from the river mouths before allowing it to enter into the sea. The system has a highly-efficient storage design with multiple stages of harvest and storage, which can be modified after it is full.
The floating boom is also called the Tactical Recovery System Hellas, or TRASH, and is manufactured by New Naval.
See also: Top Textile and Apparel Technology Solution Companies
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Across the digital landscape, the Zero-code platform industry is experiencing rapid innovation as organizations seek faster and more adaptable ways to build applications without lengthy development cycles. Modern platforms are introducing AI-driven automation, intuitive visual design environments, and stronger integration capabilities that enable teams to create and modify solutions with greater agility.
This momentum is helping businesses reduce development bottlenecks while responding quickly to operational demands. As adoption expands, providers are strengthening governance frameworks, security controls, and scalability features, ensuring that simplicity and speed remain aligned with long-term reliability and enterprise requirements.
How Do Zero-Code Platforms Benefit Modern Businesses?
Zero-code platforms are helping businesses translate ideas into working digital solutions with less complexity. Using visual interfaces, teams can design internal tools, automate routine operations and build customer-facing applications without lengthy development cycles. Inktel Contact Center Solutions applies automation within customer-facing applications and operational workflows, combining digital tools with human expertise to support execution. This flexibility supports faster experimentation and innovation, enabling organizations to refine workflows and respond to changing operational needs with greater confidence.
Another major advantage lies in improving collaboration between technical teams and business departments. Operations, marketing, finance, and customer service teams can actively participate in building the tools they rely on every day. This closer alignment reduces communication gaps and ensures that digital solutions reflect real operational needs. As a result, organizations often see stronger productivity, better workflow transparency, and faster problem resolution across departments.
Cost efficiency and scalability also make these platforms valuable in modern business environments. By minimizing the need for large development resources, organizations can manage technology investments more effectively while still expanding digital capabilities. Many platforms also support integration with existing enterprise systems, enabling businesses to extend functionality without replacing established infrastructure. With stronger oversight features and adaptable architectures, zero-code platforms are becoming a practical foundation for companies seeking sustainable digital growth.
Which Trends Are Shaping the Zero-Code Platform Market?
The Zero-code platform market is being shaped by a wave of technological and organizational shifts that are redefining how digital solutions are created and managed. One notable trend is the increasing use of intelligent features that simplify application design while improving decision-making within workflows.
Platforms are gradually incorporating advanced analytics, built-in logic engines, and adaptive tools that help organizations design more responsive systems. This evolution is enabling businesses to move beyond simple task automation toward building smarter, data-driven operational environments.
Mastery Coding uses project-based learning and digital tools to develop technology skills through structured, adaptable learning experiences.
Another important development is the growing emphasis on enterprise readiness. As adoption expands across larger organizations, platform providers are investing in stronger compliance frameworks, identity management capabilities, and centralized governance tools. These enhancements allow companies to maintain control over applications developed across different departments while ensuring regulatory standards and internal policies are consistently followed. Connectivity across different platforms is also improving, making it easier for organizations to integrate applications with cloud services, existing legacy systems, and wider data environments.
The market is also witnessing greater specialization, with platforms evolving to support industry-specific use cases in sectors such as healthcare, finance, retail, and logistics. Tailored templates, pre-configured modules, and sector-focused integrations are helping organizations deploy solutions that address unique operational challenges. As digital transformation accelerates across industries, zero-code platforms are emerging as a flexible foundation for developing adaptable and future-ready technological environments. ...Read more
The increasing cyber risk situation is forcing organizations to re-evaluate vulnerabilities originating from applications, networks, cloud environments and connected devices. Moreover, weak access controls, outdated configurations and gaps in security practices can represent a more favorable attack surface for malicious activity; whereas fragmented security processes may lead to increased difficulty in identifying and containing isolated incidents.
Cybersecurity consulting services assist organizations with these concerns through risk assessments, vulnerability reviews, security audits and incident response planning based on the operating environment of the organization. Clear security policies, employee awareness measures and defined response procedures can further strengthen preparedness and support a more coordinated approach to managing cyber threats.
How Can Cybersecurity Consulting Services Strengthen Business Security?
One of the major results of such cybersecurity consultancy includes increased protection of sensitive information from possible threats. The consultants can help organizations set up appropriate security measures for protecting the confidentiality of client information, financial information, intellectual property and other critical data. This helps minimize the likelihood of expensive data breaches while strengthening trust and confidence among customers, business partners and other stakeholders.
Cybersecurity consulting services can guide businesses to align their security practices with relevant regulatory and sectoral requirements. A better understanding of compliance obligations may also help to mitigate the risk penalties, legal issues and delays that can arise from non-compliance. External expertise can further provide an objective view of security gaps that may be overlooked during internal reviews, helping decision-makers prioritize security investments according to business needs.
An improved level of resilience in cybersecurity can help ensure smoother business operations in case of a security incident. A well-prepared organization is able to minimize the disruption, keep its key functions safe and restore itself quickly following a security incident. Availability of specialized knowledge can also alleviate the burden on internal IT teams, especially for those organizations that do not have any specific experts in the area of cybersecurity.
What Trends Are Shaping Cybersecurity Consulting Services?
The rising trend of adopting cloud native operations is also having an impact on the realm of cybersecurity consulting, especially as organizations manage increasingly distributed digital environments. Zero trust frameworks have become popular as firms begin to shift their paradigm from implicit access controls and begin to adopt continuous verification for users, devices and resources.
Consulting engagements are also becoming more focused on identity security, third-party risk and security considerations across software supply chains as organizations rely on a wider network of external platforms and providers.
Another key factor is the impact of artificial intelligence, especially as organizations look for ways to speed up their analyses of security events and detect threats in a more proactive manner. Consultants are being engaged for security needs tied to the AI systems themselves, such as data exposure, model misuse and unauthorized access.
Demand is also shifting direction towards continuous security monitoring and managed consulting models, allowing organizations to have access to ongoing guidance instead of one-off assessments. These shifts are broadening the role of cybersecurity consulting services as digital operations become more distributed, interconnected and dependent on emerging technologies. ...Read more
Organizations are increasingly looking to upgrade their applications and expand their digital capabilities, making cloud computing essential for improving business performance. Effective management of a cloud environment demands specific skills, constant monitoring, and careful cost control. Managed cloud service providers are crucial in assisting companies to operate efficiently.
Current trends show a shift from traditional infrastructure management to integrated services that emphasize security, automation, optimization, and achieving positive business outcomes.
What Are the Best Practices for Hybrid and Multicloud Management?
Businesses are also increasingly embracing the hybrid and multicloud approach in addressing application needs, compliance issues, resiliency, and flexibility. As such, there is an increased need for organizations to embrace providers that will handle workloads in public cloud, private cloud, and multicloud through unified processes.
Rather than having separate approaches for each cloud environment, organizations have been developing capabilities for monitoring, governance, identity management, and performance management on a centralized basis. There has also been significant investment in automation in such areas as provisioning, configuration management, patching, scaling of workloads, and incident response.
AI and machine learning continue to play a role in the management of cloud services. Intelligent monitoring may be able to detect odd behavior, predict future capacity needs, and assist with problem-solving efforts. Predictive analysis can also help service providers detect any possible future problems that would negatively impact performance. With the advancement of such technology, companies will be provided with more flexible cloud services without building their own competencies.
How Are Providers Improving Cloud Cost And Security?
Optimization of costs in cloud computing has emerged as a key corporate concern as more value needs to be derived from technology investments. In response, managed cloud service providers have begun adopting approaches that involve resource analysis, identification of unused capacity, configuration recommendations, and efficient workload management.
The FinOps framework has also begun to gain relevance as it involves collaborative efforts from finance, technology, and business stakeholders to align cloud expenses with tangible results. This would help corporations understand their resource consumption and make better technology investments.
Security is still closely tied to the emphasis on efficiency. There are growing expectations for managed service providers to incorporate such security capabilities as identity and access management, monitoring, vulnerability management, data protection, and compliance support into daily cloud activities. The traditional approach of viewing security as a distinct function is now being replaced by integrating security controls into the infrastructure and application environment.
Other trends include the shift towards an outcome-oriented approach to delivering services. Companies are not only assessing the availability of their infrastructure but have shifted their assessment towards application performance, user experience, resiliency, scalability, and cost effectiveness. Service level agreements are now geared more towards operational outcomes, while dashboarding and analysis provide visibility of performance and utilization. ...Read more
A software engineering and AI analytics purchase can fail long before model accuracy becomes a concern. The bigger challenge is often the handoff between existing infrastructure and new analytics, especially when camera networks and edge devices were never designed to share context. Replacing everything may simplify architecture on paper, but it can strain capital requirements and stretch deployment timelines. Buyers need to know whether a platform can work across existing technology boundaries without turning modernization into a wholesale infrastructure project.
Integration depth is therefore more revealing than the number of AI features on a product sheet. A useful platform should accept heterogeneous inputs and expose their data through a common control layer without forcing every piece of existing hardware to conform to one technical standard. It should also preserve the usefulness of legacy assets while making their information accessible to newer analytics. That matters in distributed environments where hardware replacement may be slow or economically unjustified. The real question is whether modernization can proceed around installed infrastructure rather than requiring a clean slate.
Real-time analytics creates an attention problem of its own. Video feeds and sensor events can overwhelm staff when every detection is treated as equally important. Buyers should examine how a platform separates routine activity from events that merit human review, and then look at how quickly those events reach the people responsible for validation. The difference between raw monitoring and useful analytics lies in this filtering step. A system that produces more alerts without improving prioritization merely transfers workload from observation to triage.
Architecture becomes more consequential as data volumes rise. Sending every high-definition stream to a centralized cloud environment can create avoidable bandwidth costs and response delays. Edge processing can reduce that burden when analytics are performed close to the source and only selected information moves upstream. Yet edge deployment introduces management demands. Devices and application services still need a coherent way to exchange information and support later investigation. Buyers should also examine how much infrastructure complexity is added when analytics move closer to the source.
“ CFBD ’s hybrid architecture connects legacy environments to newer computing infrastructure through hyperconvergence and virtualization.”
Searchability deserves equal importance. Once video or sensor data has been transformed into structured metadata, teams should be able to move from live detection to later investigation without manually reviewing hours of footage. Useful systems retain descriptive attributes and behavioral context in forms that can be queried quickly. The buying question is whether that context survives across live monitoring and retrospective analysis rather than being trapped in separate workflows. Fast retrieval matters because delayed investigation can erase much of the advantage gained from real-time detection.
CFBD merits consideration for buyers facing this mix of integration pressure and analytics workload. Its AZOR Ecosystem, a real-time data orchestration platform, centralizes video and sensor information. AZOR Panel, a centralized monitoring interface, receives AI-filtered events for human validation. AZOR Analytics, a video analytics component, supports real-time and forensic analysis, while edge gateways can process video near the source and pass lighter event data upstream. Its hybrid architecture connects legacy environments to newer computing infrastructure through hyperconvergence and virtualization. The fit is strongest where replacement costs and operator overload are material constraints. For organizations that need AI analytics without discarding usable infrastructure, CFBD is a practical choice. ...Read more
