Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Written by: Martin Dale Bolima, Tech Journalist, AOPG

IBM announced in a virtual media brief on the 12th of October the IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite (IBM EIS), an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven suite of environmental intelligence software to help organisations address weather- and climate-related challenges that may disrupt their business, assess their impact on climate change, and lessen the complexities of complying with regulations related to environmental safety and sustainability.

“Climate risks and sustainability are amongst the top challenges facing businesses today—from extreme weather events disrupting operations and supply chains to increasing expectations from consumers and investors to perform as an environmental leader,” said Hwee Lee Yeo, Sales Leader of AI Applications at IBM. “Businesses need actionable environmental insight to mitigate disruption and get ahead of these challenges. But current methods are often cumbersome and complex, requiring extensive manual labour, climate and data science skills and computing power.”

So, to help consumers better respond to these environmental concerns, IBM is “bringing the power of Artificial Intelligence and automation to help make this process easier and less complex with the new IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite.”

The IBM EIS is the first suite of its kind to use AI in conjunction with climate risk analytics, weather data and carbon accounting capabilities, thereby enabling organisations to curate and analyse complex data in a manner that is neither costly nor resource-extensive. Among other things, in particular, the IBM EIS can:

• Streamline and automate environmental risk management.
• Operationalise underlying processes, like carbon accounting and reduction, in order to achieve environmental goals.
• Utilise existing weather data from IBM, which is by far the most accurate in the world.
• Leverage advanced geospatial analytics already being used by companies worldwide.
• Use other innovations from IBM Research to make organisations responsive to environmental challenges.

“Our goal is to let technology do the heavy lifting so that organisations can spend less resources collecting and curating complex data and instead focus on analysing it for insights and taking action to improve their business operation and performance,” explained Yeo, who also outlined the four things that organisations will be able to do by leveraging IBM EIS. These are:

• Monitor for disruptive environmental conditions such as severe weather, wildfires, flooding and air quality, and send alerts when detected.
• Predict the potential impact of climate change and weather across the business using climate risk analytics.
• Gain insights into potential operational disruptions and prioritise mitigation and response efforts.
• Measure and report on environmental initiatives and operationalise carbon accounting, while reducing the burden of this reporting on procurement and operations teams.

Made possible by the collaboration of IBM Research, IBM Software and IBM Consulting Services, IBM EIS delivers environmental insights thru dashboards, maps, APIs and alerts, in turn helping companies address current operational challenges while strategising for the short- and long-term future. Examples of IBM EIS at work include the following:

• Retailers preparing for severe weather-related shipping and inventory disruptions.
• Manufacturers taking into account environmental risks in selecting warehouse locations.
• Energy and utility companies identifying which critical assets are most at risk of damage from wildfires due to climate change.
• Retail stores finding out how much their refrigeration systems are contributing to their overall greenhouse gas emissions and then identifying locations for improvement.

“This enhancement is a true reflection of how IBM Research partners with IBM Software and IBM Consulting Services to bring the best in class environmental solutions,” said Gargi Dasgupta, Director of IBM Research India and the CTO at IBM India and South. “A year back, IBM Research wanted to create a strategy where AI and scientific methods can be applied to some of the pressing problems in the world.”

Dasgupta added, “Creating resiliency for your own business versus making the world is a better place and you have the right policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are both critical in our sustainability journey, and both of them are offered in this launch of EIS.”

Arun Biswas, Vice President and Senior Partner of Strategic Sales & Sustainability at IBM Service, ended the virtual media brief by emphasising that IBM is addressing a very important need: The need for environmental intelligence, which Biswas described as “a foundational capability that enterprises will need to have given the ever-growing risks of climate change.”

This need is being met by IBM EIS, which is bringing the power of exponential technology such as AI to fight the impact of climate change. It is, in turn, helping organisations get real business outcomes as they continue to do their part in addressing environmental challenges.

For more details on IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite, visit: ibm.biz/environmental-intelligence. To learn more about how innovations across IBM are helping clients seeking to create a more sustainable and resilient future, please visit: ibm.com/sustainability.

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