As powerful storms replaced record-breaking drought as the weather misery confronting West Coast residents during the holidays, the beginning of the New Year became a fitting time to take stock of an increasingly needed and technologically feasible weapon to fight climate change: digitally enabled, system-wide resilience.

Harnessing digital technologies is a crucial way to channel resources and build capabilities to where they are most needed. Digital infrastructure also has the ability to minimize the adverse impacts that are rarely in the spotlight, particularly the millions of dollars in lost revenue from poorly targeted responses to climate events.

An example of this waste occurred during Hurricane Irene in 2011. New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority conducted an unprecedented, system-wide shutdown of all transit as the storm approached. But the hurricane affected only pockets of the city. As a result, MTA lost $14 million in revenue from the shutdown, while the storm’s impacts were less than anticipated. Businesses and employees dependent on the transit system, in turn, lost millions. These losses, of course, came on top of the physical damage to infrastructure caused by the storm. 

How could such costly damange be avoided in the future? By increasing an organization’s data visibility, leveraging existing data resources, analytics and sensor-based technologies to design a digitally enabled climate response system. In a recent paper, we explored how digital technologies can help improve corporate and governmental responses to a climate event with reference to three tactics:

       1.     Improving access to key resources;

       2.     Protecting critical infrastructure while reducing unnecessary downtime; and

       3.     Maintaining connections with an increasingly mobile workforce and customer-base.

Let’s start with the prospects for “smarter shutdown.” How might a transport authority improve its response capability with digital tools? Data-enabled tracks, trains and buses connected to other sensors could communicate with real-time technology monitoring storm and weather patterns. Using geographic information systems, advanced analytics can identify the location of anticipated climate events and expected impacts. This information can be incorporated into intelligent infrastructure and networks to initiate the appropriate system response and communicate the anticipated impact to employees, customers and other businesses so they can adjust.

Intelligent infrastructure with equipment that is data enabled and connected to a central source of control can bring visibility to issues detected by sensors, enable system-wide monitoring and real-time analysis, and provide insight into potentially hazardous conditions and scenario responses. The technologies in question constitute the Industrial Internet of Things (PDF), which will bring these benefits to a range of industries, including manufacturing, medicine and agriculture, as well as logistical sectors. At the core of the Industrial Internet of Things are platforms that allow various collaborators, technologies and data to come together.

For example, in the United Kingdom is a collaboration between Imperial College Business School, the Met Office and IBM. Since 2011, they have developed an “open platform” system of information sharing to link governments, insurance companies and responders, which could be a strong foundation for a digital climate resilience program. 

What about ensuring that affected areas maintain adequate access to critical resources, such as electricity, during a climate event? By digitally connecting organizations with existing accurate source information on extreme temperatures, threats become visible much earlier, buying a lot of time. Organizations enabled by real-time data capture can shift resource use to maintain access. Big Data and analytics can integrate into preparedness strategies, allowing organizations to have earlier advance notice and implement responses prior to major events occurring.

Finally, how can digital technologies affect the most important asset: people? Current trends in the mobile, digital workforce also improve resilience during a climate event. For example, after the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 was passed, the U.S. federal government reportedly saved $30 million each day in productivity during storms by having a telecommuting workforce.

An estimated 93 percent of U.S. federal workforce productivity was maintained during severe weather events. More important, digital tools can help employees avoid danger with targeted “push” alerts and access to critical information, track safety with “digital headcounts” during an event and enable peer-to-peer communication to continually incorporate the latest information.

So what should organizations do today? The first thing is to conduct a climate effect vulnerability and resilience assessment that includes comprehensive reviews of resource access, infrastructure and people. Next, businesses and other entities should incorporate the results of the review into their preparedness and response strategies.

Furthermore, we recommend making investments in better climate resilience with a focus on realizing broader benefits, such as revenue protection or cost reduction. In some cases, it will be a question of joining up the current capabilities and putting currently collected data to other uses.

In many cases the information and the technology already exists. If we can coordinate better, link up municipal and private sites and plan better in advance , we not only will target the responses better, we will buy the crucial extra time needed to limit impacts, potentially saving lives and resources.