IBM 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 fewer resources curating this complex data, and more on analyzing it for insights and taking action to improve their operations.
Companies around the world are already using many of the core weather and AI technologies found within IBM’s Environmental Intelligence Suite. For example, IBM environmental data and geospatial analytics are being used by Brazilian ethanol, bioelectricity and sugar company BP Bunge Bioenergia to help it better understand its agricultural sugarcane production and improve its market intelligence estimates regarding global sugar production and by agribusiness leader Cajamar to help Spanish farmers aiming to improve yields and reduce environmental impact via its digital Plataforma Tierra tool.
The IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite also takes advantage of AI-driven innovations from IBM Research that make it easier for climate and data scientists to analyze massive environmental datasets, and a new climate risk modelling framework used to generate data on future wildfire and flooding risks. Additionally, the suite will leverage unique technologies from IBM Research which apply natural language processing and automation designed to help companies estimate carbon emissions and identify opportunities to reduce them across their operations or with suppliers.
The Environmental Intelligence Suite can be integrated with IBM’s broader software portfolio for additional efficiencies across business operations – including IBM Maximo Application Suite to help companies protect and extend the lifecycle of their critical assets and IBM Supply Chain Intelligence Suite to help build more sustainable and resilient supply chains.
