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Facilitating AI-Driven Sustainability: A Service-Oriented Architecture for Interoperable Environmental Data Access

Author

Listed:
  • Babak Jalalzadeh Fard

    (Department of Environmental, Agricultural, and Occupational Health, College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198, USA)

  • Sadid A. Hasan

    (Microsoft AI, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA)

  • Jesse E. Bell

    (Department of Environmental, Agricultural, and Occupational Health, College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198, USA
    Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, University of Nebraska System, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA
    School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68583, USA)

Abstract

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly agentic AI, have created opportunities to enhance global sustainability by improving the efficiency and accuracy of environmental monitoring and response systems. Agentic AIs autonomously plan and execute towards specific goals with minimal or no human intervention; however, accessing environmental data is challenging and requires expertise due to inherent fragmentation and the diversity of data formats. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that allows AI systems to securely access and interact with diverse software tools and data sources through unified interfaces, reducing the need for custom integrations while enabling more accurate, context-aware assistance. This study introduces WeatherInfo_MCP, an interface that provides the required expertise for AI agents to access National Weather Service (NWS) data. Built on a service-oriented architecture, the system uses a centralized engine to handle robust geocoding and data extraction while providing AI agents with simple, independent tools to retrieve weather data from the NWS API. The system was validated through 14 unit tests and 23 comprehensive protocol compliance tests against the MCP 2025-06-18 specification, achieving a 100% pass rate across all categories, demonstrating its reliability when working with AI agents. We also successfully tested our model alongside a memory MCP to showcase its performance in a multi-MCP environment. While in its earliest version, WeatherInfo_MCP connects to the NWS API, its modular design and compliance with software development and MCP standards facilitate immediate expansion to additional environmental data and tools. WeatherInfo_MCP is released as an open-source tool to support the sustainable development community, enabling broad adoption of AI agents for environmental use cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Babak Jalalzadeh Fard & Sadid A. Hasan & Jesse E. Bell, 2026. "Facilitating AI-Driven Sustainability: A Service-Oriented Architecture for Interoperable Environmental Data Access," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 18(5), pages 1-19, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:18:y:2026:i:5:p:2445-:d:1876837
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