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Kayla Voigt
By Kayla Voigt
Kayla Voigt
Kayla Voigt
Always in search of adventure, Kayla hails from Hopkinton, MA, the start of the Boston Marathon. You can find her at the summit of a mountain or digging in to a big bowl of pasta. Like what she has to say? Say hello on her website: http://www.kaylalewkowicz.com.
Jul 8, 2021· 6 min

Strategically Navigating Weather Across the Enterprise

climacon 2021 www.tomorrow.io weather intelligence

Weather data and weather intelligence can be extremely powerful tools for your business.

But combine it with your proprietary data — like vehicle traffic, financial assets, or fleet management  — and you’ve got something extraordinary.

That’s why at Tomorrow.io, we partner with top companies solving challenges across industries to deliver a total solution to our customers.

We sat down with two of our incredible partners during ClimaCon 2021: Imad Mouline, CTO at Everbridge and Itai Dadon, Global Head of Smart Cities at Itron. We talked through how they use weather intelligence in their enterprise organizations and what that means for your business.

Prepare Your Organization for Critical Events

Both Everbridge and Smart Cities deal with critical weather events. Any event that could negatively impact your business negatively is a critical event, but with the weather, that looks like:

  • Late shipments due to closed ports, rail, or roads
  • Lost cargo or equipment due to inclement weather
  • Damaged facilities due to extreme weather events
  • Employee injury or safety hazards requiring additional equipment or pausing operations
  • Last-minute changes in operations or customer service because of the weather

Often customers view weather as something that’s a catastrophe, like a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake. But weather is part of everyday operations, especially for a crisis communications platform like Everbridge.

“Weather is the number one factor that triggers a response within our system. And time is of the essence with weather, especially if it’s something major like a tornado, so we can figure out exactly how many people will be impacted and communicate with them as quickly as possible to save lives.” – Imad Mouline, CTO at Everbridge

Critical events can occur from everyday weather like high winds or waves, heavy rain or snow, or a heatwave. When it comes to incorporating weather into enterprise operations, it’s important to account for anything that could disrupt your business.

“Consider a particular shipment, where it’s related to drug delivery that will be impacted by a hurricane. If it’s not caught in time and communicated effectively, there’s more than just your business at stake. Now, we work often with supply routes where weather has a real operational impact on a daily basis. The more granular and timely that data is, the more you can mitigate or eliminate that impact.” – Imad Mouline, CTO at Everbridge

With critical events threatening your business operations, it’s important to be proactive. You don’t want to wait for something to happen — addressing it in advance makes sure you’re prepared and efficiently making intelligent decisions with the right data.

Digitally Transform Your Business

That’s what’s going to give you a competitive advantage in today’s marketplace.

Digital transformation is about gathering as much data as you can about what’s currently happening and act on it intelligently — getting to the point where you can predict outcomes before they occur, so you’re ready for anything.

2020 has been a challenging year in more ways than one. In the middle of a global pandemic, cities around the world struggled with extreme weather events, from wildfires in California to disastrous flooding in Australia. 

“There’s so many challenges facing us today, that cities and companies want to be more agile, with enough data to be able to react intelligently. For example, I’ve met with the governor of Jakarta, Indonesia. It’s a city that’s grown tremendously over the last few years — but it’s also sinking and at-risk with rising sea levels and massive flooding. They need to be able to operate a set of pumps to mitigate flooding as best as possible, and are hoping to automate that and optimize based on real data.”  – Itai Dadon, Global Head of Smart Cities at Itron 

We see so much data sitting in a Word document or in an Excel sheet, but it’s not actionable. You need a streamlined way of interpreting meteorological data and translate that into action.

“You have to deliver information in a way that’s digestible for the person who needs to solve the problem right then. With Tomorrow, hyperlocal weather provides data in a 500-meter grid so you can really make decisions effectively. You think about cities like San Antonio, Texas, who want to alert people during heat waves or poor air quality from wildfires, because that can save lives.”  – Itai Dadon, Global Head of Smart Cities at Itron 

If you know there’s a weather event coming, you need to make smart decisions quickly, and that’s at the core of what we’re trying to do at Tomorrow.io.

Create an Enterprise Weather Playbook with Tomorrow.io

You may already have a playbook to deal with competitors, cranky customers, or changes in the marketplace. But do you have a playbook for the weather? 

When it comes to critical, weather-related events, you need a playbook to respond:

  1. Assess. What data is coming in, and what does it mean? Can you trust that this data is accurate and timely?
  2. Assets. Locate the assets that are impacted by the data and understand how that data will impact your business.
  3. Act. Do you have a standard operating procedure for this event, or can you trigger an automated system to assist with the event?
  4. Analyze. After the event, analyze what worked and what didn’t. Use historical data from previous critical events to see what steps can prevent damage and what you’d do differently to have a better outcome.

“There’s a lot of information coming together to determine how you prioritize your actions, which ones require manual intervention or automation, and what’s actionable. All of this is possible today, and it will be the norm tomorrow. Our goal is to make sure that with every event, we can work together to mitigate negative impact.”- Imad Mouline, CTO at Everbridge

This playbook works for emergencies, but it can also be applied to everyday operations that are impacted by weather.

“There are so many sources of data you can use. How does weather impact traffic, parking, public transportation? You can use it to optimize the way traffic flows through a city once you know what the weather will be. Having all of these sources of data unlocks decision-making and visualization at scale, and that’s what we love about Tomorrow.” – Itai Dadon, Global Head of Smart Cities at Itron 

Getting the right data to the right person is critical with digitization because if you’re providing too much data, it’s easy to get lost or overwhelmed. By using that data to create a standard operating procedure for your organization, you’ll be able to better make decisions and prepare for whatever the weather brings.

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