IBM today announced 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, more easily assess their own impact on the planet, and reduce the complexity of regulatory compliance and reporting.
Companies are facing climate-related damage to their assets, disruptions to supply chains and operations, as well as increasing expectations from consumers and investors to perform as an environmental leader. Extreme weather, climate action failure and human-led environmental damage were cited as the top three most likely risks for businesses over the next ten years in the World Economic Forum’s “Global Risks Report 2021.” Businesses need actionable environmental insights to address these challenges, but current methods are often cumbersome and complex – requiring intensive manual labor, climate and data science skills, and computing power.
The IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite announced today aims to help companies streamline and automate the management of environmental risks and operationalize underlying processes, including carbon accounting and reduction, to meet environmental goals. The suite leverages existing weather data from IBM, the overall most accurate provider globally, advanced geospatial analytics already in use by companies around the world, and new innovations from IBM Research. The offering is the first to bring together artificial intelligence, weather data, climate risk analytics, and carbon accounting capabilities in this way – allowing organizations to spend less resources curating this complex data, and more on analyzing it for insights and taking action to improve their operations.
“The future of business and the environment are deeply intertwined. Not only are companies coping with the effects of extreme weather disruptions on their operations, they’re also being held increasingly accountable by shareholders and regulators for how their operations impact the planet,” said Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D., General Manager, IBM AI Applications. “IBM is bringing together the power of AI and hybrid cloud to provide businesses with environmental intelligence designed to help them improve environmental performance and reporting, create more efficient business operations to reduce resource consumption, and plan for resiliency in the face of climate disruptions.”
“Today’s announcement further accelerates our commitment to apply scientific methods to find new solutions for the most pressing challenges that we face as a society. Last year, IBM Research launched a global initiative called the “Future of Climate” to develop and demonstrate innovations focused on addressing climate change by leveraging AI expertise across IBM Research,” said Gargi Dasgupta – Director, IBM Research India and CTO IBM India/South Asia. “To support this initiative, IBM Research – India, which has been at the forefront of advancing AI and its applications, has played a critical role in building the new Carbon Performance Engine and Climate aware applications including forecasting, which are now a part of the overall Environmental Intelligence Suite.”
