Leveraging the power of technologies for climate risk intelligence and resilience  

Author: Daniel Martens, Climate Risk Intelligence Lead 

On the flip side of climate change, where extreme weather events and natural hazards cause an ever-increasing threat to businesses and societies, it’s often overlooked or only addressed post-disaster when assets are damaged, or operations and livelihoods disrupted. Science and experience inform us that climate risks will only become more common and more destructive. 

More and more, regulators and shareholders are requesting business owners to concentrate on adaptation and disclose the risks climate-related hazards have on their business continuity through guidelines by amongst others the Task force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). However, business owners are sometimes left in the dark on how to get actionable insights into these risks. 

Need for holistic climate resilience strategies 

So, what has prevented businesses from undertaking climate and natural hazard risk assessments at scale? 

The scarcity of scalable and affordable technology, the lack of enough accurate data within reach, as well as a focus on traditional disaster risk management rather than strategic resilience, as addressed by Djeevan Schiferli in the article Climate Change Risk & Resilience. The latter aside, the majority of the arguments no longer hold up in today’s world, due to the abundance of available data and technologies. 

Therefore, the actual reason is deprioritisation of strategic climate resilience. Business owners have a growing list of urgent and ad-hoc needs to consider ensuring business continuity, and the sometimes considered intangible climate risks get pushed to the end of the priority list. That is, until a disaster strikes, asset insurance premiums need reviewing or risk disclosure reports are due.  

But disruptions rather than solely disasters are a significant growing concern for decision-makers, as interdependencies of processes and systems are becoming more evident and cascading effects even clearer. For instance, heatwaves across Europe and China in 2022 caused drought and low water levels, impacting crops and disrupting supply chains due to unnavigable waterways and food shortages. Economic losses were estimated to be USD22bn in Europe and USD7.6bn in China. 

Technologies to understand, prevent, predict, and optimise 

How can we leverage data and technology today to stay ahead of the possible impacts that climate change may have on business continuity, both directly and via cascading effects? 

Before we can precisely predict all the complex processes affecting businesses today and in the future, we need to take a step back and take stock of all the advanced technologies we can start leveraging right now. 

Data 

Since the onset of the digital age we have generated a huge amount of data – it is estimated that by 2025 there will be 175 billion terabytes of data in the global datasphere. This is an enormous figure, though it can seem rather meaningless if all that data is not put to good use. 

Examples of systems collecting global date at ever higher resolutions and frequencies are the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites and Intermap’s multi-sensor technologies. They allow near real-time imagery at below 1 metre resolution. These datasets are utilised to better understand weather patterns and land use changes, or to assess the onset and extent of flood events.  

However, closer to the Earth’s surface is where most of the data is generated. From smartwatches to smartphones and CCTV cameras to more advanced IoT devices, more than 43 billion devices are expected to be connected to the internet in 2023, so we can leverage almost every source to monitor the weather and natural disasters, track environmental parameters and make far better risk assessments, more often, and more proactively. 

Computing power 

We need more computing power and ease of access to efficiently process and analyse all that data. I remember only a decade ago using Linux commands to book a place in a virtual queue to access a limited number of cores in a server room, only to wait so I could run a numerical simulation – and if you were smart you set them up in batch to run numerous scenarios simultaneously. 

Currently we have almost instant access to cloud and edge technologies and can even turn our personal desktops into high-spec data crunching machines that render graphics in an instant. Affordability is less of an issue now, though accessibility is, due to affected supply chains globally. But a single GPU already allows us to run flood simulations on a 50x50cm numerical grid on a small city scale. Massive parallel computing with GPUs allows for a larger resolution and extension of boundaries to country-scale or even wider. Cloud computing makes this possible using virtual servers, saving you the trouble of investing in equipment and letting you run complex calculations from anywhere on the planet. 

Advanced analytics 

We included some data and some computing power. The third element we really need are the tools to carry out the data analytics. Machine and deep learning have indeed changed the way domain experts are able to handle complex problems, using almost every data source to extrapolate our natural hazard insights to areas where data is scarce. 

FloodTags is an example, who deliver sophisticated services using artificial intelligence and natural language processing to monitor floods and wildfires by analysing public media data. And Hydroinformatics Institute (H2i), who support the Singapore government using CCTV cameras to identify and predict rainfall intensity as well as surface level flooding by combining computer vision technology and enhanced machine learning algorithms. 

Technology integration to enable strategic climate resilience 

We should by now be well on our way to incorporating these technologies and helping businesses get actionable insights to climate risks at scale, perform risk assessments with ease, and quantify their exposure and vulnerability to climate risks. This eliminates the burden of post-disaster recovery or regulatory pressures, saving money and lives. Doing so will inevitably make it simpler for businesses to integrate climate risk and resilience into their strategic resilience agenda and allows decision-makers to concentrate on maintaining business continuity. 

Daniel Martens is a Climate Risk Intelligence Lead, responsible for a digital portfolio of solutions. He has an impressive track record in risk intelligence data and software solutions, helping business owners map their current and future climate risks and develop mitigation strategies to safeguard both their businesses and the communities they serve. 

This article was originally published in Applied Technology Review on 7 March 2023.