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HomeArtificial Intelligence and Machine LearningEnvironmental Intelligence Incorporates AI to Defend Against Weather RisksĀ 

Environmental Intelligence Incorporates AI to Defend Against Weather RisksĀ 

By AI Trends StaffĀ 

AI is being incorporated into environmental intelligence service offerings aimed at helping businesses respond and defend against risks posed by climate change and extreme weather events.Ā Ā Ā 

Environmental intelligence is defined by theĀ University of ExeterĀ in England as the integration of environmental and sustainability research with data science, AI, and digital technologies to provide insight to address climate challenges and mitigate the effects of environmental change.Ā Ā Ā 

IBM this week called attention to the segment with its announcement ofĀ a suite of environmental intelligence software that leverages AI to help organizations prepare for and respond to weather and climate risks that may disrupt business.Ā 

IBM has long been interested in the weather market. In 2015, IBM acquired The Weather Company, everything but the Weather Channel TV segment, which did enter a long-term contract with IBM for weather forecast data and analytics. At the time, the Weather Company was handling 26 billion inquiries on its cloud-based system daily, several times more than the leading search engine at the time, according to a 2017 account inĀ Maximo Secrets.Ā The Weather Channel also had a network of partners feeding it an enormous volume of weather data daily.Ā Ā 

Climate change is now a business risk. The World Economic Forumā€™s ā€œGlobal Risks Report 2021ā€Ā names extreme weather, climate action failure, and human-led environmental damage as the top three most likely risks for business over the next 10 years. Companies are facing climate-related damage to their assets, disruption to supply chains, and increasing expectations from consumers and investors to demonstrate environmental leadership.Ā 

This creates an opportunity for relevant service providers. The IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite leverages weather data from IBM and new innovations from IBM Research. The offering combines AI, weather data, climate risk analytics, and carbon accounting capabilities.Ā Ā 

Offered via software-as-a-service, the package can be used to:Ā Ā Ā Ā 

MonitorĀ for disruptive environmental conditions such as severe weather, wildfires, flooding and air quality and send alerts when detected;Ā Ā 
PredictĀ potential impacts of climate change and weather across the business using climate risk analytics;Ā Ā 
Gain insightsĀ into potential operational disruptions and prioritize mitigation and response efforts;Ā Ā 
Measure and reportĀ on environmentalĀ initiatives and operationalize carbon accounting, while reducing the burden of this reporting on procurement and operations teams.Ā 
Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D., General Manager, IBM AI Applications

ā€œThe future of business and the environment are deeply intertwined. Not only are companies coping with the effects of extreme weather disruptions on their operations, theyā€™re also being held increasingly accountable by shareholders and regulators for how their operations impact the planet,ā€ stated Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D., General Manager, IBM AI Applications, in aĀ press release. ā€œIBM is bringing together the power of AI and hybrid cloud to provide businesses with environmental intelligence designed to help them improve environmental performance,ā€Ā Ā 

BP BungeĀ Bioenergia, a Brazilian ethanol, bioelectricity, and sugar company formed as a joint venture between Bunge and BP in 2019, was cited by IBM in the release as a customer of its weather data. The company uses it to assist its sugarcane production and to improve its market intelligence estimates of global sugar production.Ā Ā 

IBM Research contributed tools to help climate and data scientists analyze massive environment datasets, and conduct risk modeling on future wildfire and flooding risks. IBM Research is also applying natural language processing and automation to help estimate carbon emissions and identify ways to reduce them.Ā Ā 

Weather Intelligence Company KomunidadĀ Ā 

A startup in the Philippines,Ā KomunidadĀ is a customer of IBMā€™s Weather Company, and also a competitor in the environmental intelligence arena. The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, vulnerable to typhoons, floods, volcanos, earthquakes, and droughts. While working in IT, founder FelixĀ AyqueĀ began compiling cyclone reports and sending them as alerts to communities, according to an account inĀ TechCrunch.Ā Ā Ā Ā 

His work evolved into an environmental intelligence platform that he named Komunidad, which collected data from government and private sources, and from it produced analytics that could be customized to help clients react quickly to potential disasters.Ā 

Based in Manila and Singapore, the startup announced recently that it has landed $1 million in seed funding, led by Wavemaker Partners, to expand in Asia and add features to its platform. Founded in 2019, the company has clients in the Philippines, India, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and serves sectors including utilities, agriculture, mining, education, and local governments.Ā Ā Ā 

AyqueĀ worked as an IT developer at several weather agencies, including the state-owned New ZealandĀ MetService. Demand for his reports grew as companies needed to respond to climate change. He began earning enough revenue to expand and hire meteorologists, data scientists, software developers, and business development teams based in India and Southeast Asia.Ā Ā 

The platform turns data into dashboards relevant to their customersā€™ needs, offering updates on severe weather, solar, marine, soil moisture, or air quality factors.Ā ā€œWe act as a system integrator that only brings the relevant data and tells customers that this is the most important data,ā€ statedĀ AyqueĀ toĀ TechCrunch.Ā 

Tomorrow.io to Launch Radar-Equipped Weather SatellitesĀ 

Another of his weather data sources is Tomorrow.io, a startup headquartered in Boston offering real-time weather forecasts in its Weather Intelligence Platform. The company was cofounded in 2016 by CEO Shimon Elkabetz, who served in the Israeli Air Force for 11 years and experienced multiple near-death, weather-related experiences. That got him interested in weather prediction. The company has raised a total of $183.9 million, according to Crunchbase. Customers of the companyā€™s service include Uber, Delta, Ford Motor, and National Grid.Ā Ā 

The US Air Force recently reached an agreement with Tomorrow.io for a $19.3 million contract to support the deployment of proprietary, radar-equipped weather satellites. Tomorrow.io plans to launch 32 small satellites to provide global coverage of precipitation and other critical weather and ocean observations. Data generated by the satellites will be ingested into the companyā€™s own modeling suite, which includes numerical weather models, AI-enabled ā€œnowcastingā€ and flood forecasting.Ā Ā Ā 

The radar will provide observations of precipitation and storm dynamics beyond the capability of sensors alone, and will expand radar coverage of the world with a ā€œrevisitā€ rate higher than that of other spaceborne radar efforts, including NASAā€™s Global Precipitation Measurement mission.Ā Ā 

Weather intelligence is a busy market. A list of the 10 most interesting weather intelligence companies, out of a total of 90, was recently published byĀ Tracxn.Ā 

The total market for global weather information technology was valued at $9.4 billion in 2019 and is projected to grow at 8.5% annually through 2027, according toĀ Grand View Research.Ā 

Read the source articles and information from theĀ University of Exeter, inĀ Maximo Secrets, in the World Economic Forumā€™s ā€œGlobal Risks Report 2021,ā€Ā Ā in aĀ press releaseĀ from IBM, inĀ TechCrunch, and on the sites ofĀ Ā TracxnĀ andĀ Grand View Research.Ā 

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