DTN Uses AWS For Weather Data To Make Supply Chains More Sustainable

Sustainability DTN Uses AWS For Weather Data To Make Supply Chains More Sustainable Felicia Jackson Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write about innovation, finance, energy, climate and sustainability. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Sep 30, 2022, 12:36pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin LONG BEACH, CA – OCTOBER 2: Shipping carries 90% of global trade and managing weather events is . . .

[+] critical. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) Getty Images Sustainable supply chains are increasingly important. Investors are concerned about how companies are managing the policy and physical impacts of climate change and recent instances are bringing this front of mind.

There are significant implications both financially and socially. The COVID-19 pandemic caused one of the biggest supply chain disruptions in recent years, but extreme weather continues to cause major issues, disrupting industries in different ways in different places . No one can miss the urgency and cost, in terms of life and finance, of weather such as recently experienced through Hurricane Ian.

Even today the estimated clean up costs in Florida are expected to run into the billions. Earlier in 2022 the European Environment Agency warned that floods and extreme weather have caused Europe nearly half a trillion euros in damages, with nearly 150,000 associated deaths, over the last four decades. That means managing risk in the supply chain is going to mean understanding and working around the weather.

Weather and climate-related events cost the global economy $329 billion in 2021. That’s a major factor for insurance, with the UNFCCC’s April 2022 report warning that historical climate data – that insurers have used to calculate forward risk and set insurance prices – can no longer be used to predict the future. As we are seeing play out around us, climate risks are becoming too complex and difficult to manage.

At the same time, there are often multiple instances which can result in cascading risk effects. Data that can help us understand what’s coming is increasingly critical. Businesses today need to develop an understanding of their long-term risk from climate change, as well as next year’s key weather variables, and this is only becoming more important over time.

EY ‘s Global Climate Risk Barometer shows that while corporate disclosure is improving, many companies are still failing to manage risk. It’s about evaluating a risk profile – as the climate changes and there is increased drought, flooding, wildfires – all those tangible impacts of direct weather and taking action. That’s where DTN’s weather intelligence can help.

MORE FOR YOU Is Carbon Capture Another Fossil Fuel Industry Con? Sustainable Fashion Wants Brands To Redefine Business Growth Trouble With Predicting Future Of Transportation Is That Today Gets In The Way No matter the impacts of extreme weather, companies must also manage their existing logistics networks, and work out ways to avoid interruptions to their supply chains due to weather events. As DTN’s global commercial lead and meteorologist Renny Vandewege says, “It’s imperative for business to create an operational and strategic plan to manage those risks. Then when those threats become imminent – documented by action plans, and drilled through exercises, we can help ensure that businesses can react.

” Vandewege says that DTN’s focus is on weather but that it supports agriculture, utilities, aviation, shipping, outdoor events – any industry that has weather as top variability in terms of business, sustainability and emissions. He says: “It’s about helping businesses solve challenges where weather is a risk, in a lots of ways. ” DTN provides weather intelligence, and alerts, to help customers make logistics routes more efficient and maximize efficiencies, which can help manage weather response, cut costs and even reduce emissions.

Every business will be affected differently by weather– but commonalities are climate and weather profile geographically, which helps in understanding key asset vulnerabilities. This means not only managing risk but lowering emissions. In shipping for example, which carries around 90 per cent of global trade, weather-optimized routing can reduce emissions up to 5% depending on the type of vessel, the season, and the conditions.

What matters is getting the balance right between the fastest, safest and most efficient route, including any factors that could be unsafe – the safest possible route at the most efficient level. Helping fleets plan their route and solve the same kind of challenges and do it at speed, that requires computing power that enables the fastest route, least fuel, most efficiency. Then there’s the integration of satellite data for everything from weather to pirates to troop movements.

Vandewege says, “We help plan start and stop points, way points that factor oceanic and weather conditions, requests from captains and piracy warnings. ” It’s the increasing complexity of client demand that has driven DTN’s work with cloud computing platform provider AWS. Vandewege says, “We’re managing petabytes of data points from satellite, radar, sensors – AI, machine learning we’re starting to be able to resolve data at a local level .

There are 1km even sub-km squares that we’re resolving for – so we don’t have to deploy a sensor network with our model but create fine resolution. ” LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – NOVEMBER 30: Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Adam Selipsky delivers a keynote . .

. [+] address during AWS re:Invent 2021, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, at The Venetian Las Vegas on November 30, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services) Getty Images for Amazon Web Services Vandewege explains: “DTN used to be prepared for peak days or worst weather days, which our own infrastructure had to be able to match.

But AWS allows us to scale use up and down as needed and that means that we don’t need our own data centres burning useless energy when not in use. ” DTN needs quadrillions of processes per second and the speed and volume of data required needs matching of process needs. Chris Wellise, head of sustainability at AWS explains, “The use of our elastic and scalable cloud infrastructure allows DTN to manage rapidly enough – on demand – resource utilisation rates are high but you’re only using what you need.

We did this for Moderna and it’s about empowering scientists to be more productive and create more timely results. ” Wellise believes that most business and climate challenges are really big data problems and that by scaling quadrillions of processes per second up to the cloud handling, we have the capacity to understand in more detail what the future holds. He describes DTN’s work as a great example of using computing resources to solve environmental problems.

Another is CropX on agriculture related issues using DC2 instances and a wide sensor network to facilitate precision agriculture, helping to manage water consumption and improve crop yield. Whether preparing for the impacts of extreme weather or modelling the future of climate change, the business of business is to continue and operations such as DTN can help a company to optimize its logistics operations around weather problems. Yet its potentially the long term impact of cloud computing on how we understand and address the complexity of the environmental challenges that we face that may have the most impact in the end.

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