With an area of nearly 600,000 km², Minas Gerais is a state of great biodiversity, housing three important Brazilian biomes: Caatinga, Cerrado, and the Atlantic Forest. The complex dynamics of land use in the state have generated significant challenges for environmental preservation. The intensive development process, driven by activities such as mining and agriculture, has historically contributed to environmental damage.
Urban expansion also raises concerns, such as conflicts related to water use and the occupation of environmentally sensitive areas. In this context, the State Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainable Development (Semad) of Minas Gerais has the mission of formulating and coordinating the state policy for environmental protection and water resource management, aiming for sustainable development.
However, the Semad team faced a challenging scenario: a backlog of over 65,000 environmental violation notices to process, with a limited number of civil servants. This bottleneck alone was already a significant problem.
Challenge and Solution
The situation became even more urgent with the publication of Law No. 24.755/2024, which instituted the risk of intercurrent prescription. This meant that Semad had a deadline to analyze the processes, and failure to comply could result in the loss of the ability to collect fines, impacting the state's revenue and the institution's credibility.
To solve this challenge, Semad decided to turn to Artificial Intelligence to speed up the processing of the notices. In partnership with Xertica, the agency implemented IA Semad, a solution based on Xertica accelerators on Google Cloud technology, designed to integrate databases and automate the generation of opinions and documents on environmental violations.
The development and implementation of the project took almost 10 months. The work was collaborative and structured, with the Xertica team dedicating itself to understanding the complexity of environmental legislation to adapt the solution to Semad's needs. The result of the joint effort was a solution that uses generative AI to assist in drafting opinions and process summaries, and now Xertica will begin the training phase for Semad's teams on how to use the tool.
Results
Although there aren't yet tangible results, expectations are high since the solution was just implemented. The solution has the potential to free up to 40% of the technical team's time for strategic tasks. Additionally, the response time for demands is expected to be reduced from 30 to 5 business days. The tool also aims to improve transparency in inspection and create a replicable model for other secretariats.
The initial team feedback is very positive. As reported by Semad, the solution has significant potential to assist in managing a large volume of processes.
"With more than 65,000 stalled violation notices, the inefficiency in Semad's processing was undermining fiscal action and the effectiveness of the law," says Marilia Carvalho de Melo, Secretary of the Environment of Minas Gerais. "Our solution aims to transform environmental management, ensuring offenders are held accountable, the fight against deforestation is real, and market competition becomes fair."
