Climate change, its impacts such as extreme weather events, and our obligation to decarbonize the entire supply chain brings a new dimension to what data we need to identify emerging risks and opportunities for a business. Nowadays, businesses want to know immediately which of their assets and activities are at risk and when. In order to know this and to develop appropriate strategies they need to gather a large amount of structured and unstructured data scattered across the internet from various sources.
This process is achieved through Big Data Analytics-BDA, which are processed with specific tools and techniques and can provide essential information on the potential changes in climate that can affect a business, helping it to move towards a more sustainable and resilient environment.
To be more specific, some of the cases where Big Data Analytics will bring insight and help address challenges in the operations and supply chain of a business are:
Problems of raw material resource supply: Changes in climate conditions can affect the acquisition of resources and raw materials, but can also affect their quality and quantity. By using BDA a company can reduce uncertainty in raw material demand and also forecast their demand in the presence of extreme conditions.
Damages or destructions on premises: Due to extreme weather conditions, damages can occur to key structures of a business, such as facilities and means of transport. With the help of BDAs, data on weather variations, risk exposures and expected impacts of climate change can be predicted, recorded and analyzed. This will enable businesses to create mitigation policies and strategies to cope with these conditions.
Additional costs: Big Data Analytics can be used to identify, monitor and in some cases limit cost overheads that may arise concerning resources and raw materials, or additional taxes and environmental regulations that may affect a business.
Business reputation: big data processing and analytics can calculate the value of a business based on customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction, from product delays or poor quality. Strategies can be created on how the business should interact with its external environment and prevent negative effects.
Αt E-ON Integration we use Big Data Analytics to create a tool (software) that will collect and process massive data on potential changes in climate (e.g. temperature, rainfall), and produce information concerning potential changes in conditions affecting locally the geographies of our customers and their activities. Our goal is to provide tailored advice to create appropriate strategies to address the risks and opportunities from the impacts of climate change.