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Information in Action: A European Winter Turns to Spring

It’s late winter in Europe. Snow falls on London and public transport grinds to a halt, while extreme weather in Northern Europe affects supply chains and delivery routes. At the same time, with Spring around the corner, Mediterranean sunshine brings the first wave of tourists in unexpectedly early to Southern Europe.

We all know these events might happen, but how much better could we be prepared? With so much data now available on weather patterns, transport issues, delivery tracking and retail demand forecasts, how is information changing the way that Europe copes with the diversity of weather conditions as winter turns to spring?

Having the right information allows enterprises to plan ahead so they don’t have to firefight come rain or shine. For example, in early 2016 the UK experienced major floods, from three significant Atlantic storms. In its wake employees were unable to travel into work, customers stayed away and availability of goods and services were jeopardised.

Adverse weather conditions are estimated to cost businesses around £350m a year, according to research by IT supplier Daisy Group. Nobody can stop the weather, but businesses can exploit the increasing data available on weather patterns, transport issues, delivery tracking and retail demand forecasts to help decide what action should be taken for the best possible outcome.

Exploiting weather data
Brendon Petsch, IT director at winter risk management company, Gritit, specialises in exploiting weather data to help clients minimise risk. He says loss of revenue caused by snow, ice, floods and storms is a major concern for businesses and not only applies to retailers but to any organisation.

“Getting your staff to work is the first hurdle and it may not be your premises that are affected but closed schools, closed roads or public transport network issues. If your premises are affected by adverse weather, there could be damage to any part of the IT infrastructure and the losses can start to add up fast,” he says.

Petsch says that being adequately insured is an obvious answer, but coverage for physical damage may not be enough.

“The loss of data or the time it would take to get a business back on its feet will often be the difference between surviving an extreme event or not,” he says.

There is a lot that can be achieved from an IT perspective to minimise risks, not just the usual disaster recovery plans that most businesses have in place. IT systems that enable staff to work from home and have access to all the data they need to do their job is one option, which Petsch says has been made easier with the advent of cloud.

“Leveraging the benefit of the cloud for your main data servers is critical. We could never match the level of security and resilience we get from using a dedicated private cloud. We don’t store any data on any hard drives locally and can operate anywhere there is an internet connection,” says Petsch.

   

Managing insurance risk
Insurance is another example of a sector that is determined to make better use of large data volumes to make better decisions and plan ahead. A new service that will provide insurance companies with information about severe windstorms is being developed by services firm CGI in a project directed by the European Union’s Copernicus programme.

The initiative will make data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service more accessible to the insurance sector to plan products and services to prevent financial losses.

“A key objective is to combine observations of the climate system with the latest science to develop authoritative information about the past, current and future states of the climate and its impacts,” said Jean-Noël Thépaut, head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

The proof-of-concept service will exploit data on windstorms stretching back over 100 years to produce forecasts that will also support planning in sectors such as energy, transport, civil engineering and government.

An appetite for data
There is a real appetite to use data to predict problems caused by weather and use it in conjunction with other key data such as logistics, supply chain, transport and retail so that businesses are informed in advance about what actions would reduce risk. Understanding how data can be used to minimise risk and be better prepared is increasingly a business imperative for many sectors.

Gritit’s business, for example, relies on such far-sightedness - its system uses weather data and processes 570 million variables, creating new job lists for drivers in less than six minutes.

“Our business uses extremely accurate weather forecasts to predict weather over the following 24 hours. We are then acting pre-emptively to ensure that any sites at risk are treated appropriately to drastically reduce this risk,” says Petsch.

He says using weather data, logistics and transport data to help plan ahead is key for businesses, and that even more data will become available to improve decision-making.

“The internet of things will help a lot, and we will be able to make decisions on devices based on current and potentially forecast weather - smart thermostats are just a small example,” he says.

A good strategy for IT leaders is to plan for rainy day scenarios, and worse, says Petsch: “To make any meaningful business decisions or changes to process, actual data and enough data is absolutely necessary.”

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