IBM Unveils AI Software for Supply Chain Sustainability

Announced by IBM, the technology company has unveiled a suite of environmental intelligence software that leverages AI to help organisations mitigate supply chain risks when it comes to weather and climate, as well as assess their own environmental impact on the planet and reduce regulatory complexities.

“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,” said IBM.

In the World Economic Forum’s ‘Global Risks Report 2021’ climate action failure and human-led environmental damage were cited as the top three most likely risks for businesses in the next 10 years. 

“Businesses need actionable environmental insights to address these challenges, but current methods are often cumbersome and complex – requiring intensive manual labour, climate and data science skills, and computing power,” added IBM.

The IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite

IBM’s Environmental Intelligence Suite aims to help organisations in streamlining and automating their management of environmental risks, as well as operationalise underlying processes such as carbon accounting and reduction to meet their environmental goals.  

Leveraging existing weather data from IBM, advanced geospatial analytics, and new innovations from IBM Research, the suite is the first to bring together AI, weather data, climate risk analytics, and carbon accounting capabilities in this way. In doing so organisations can spend less time on curating this kind of complex data, and spend more time on analysing the data for insights and taking actions. 

Specific Features of IBM’s Environmental Intelligence Suite (SaaS):

• Monitor for disruptive environmental conditions and send alerts when detected
• Predict potential impacts of climate change and weather 
• Provide potential operational disruptions insights, prioritising mitigation and response
• Measure and report environmental initiatives and operationalise carbon accounting

IBM delivers the insights via APIs, dashboards, maps and alerts to help organisations address both immediate operational challenges and long term strategy planning.

"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."