AI for urban climate resilience

Ensuring climate resilience in the urban food, water, and energy nexus is so complex that it needs a new approach. We are using big data and AI to quantify the financial impacts of climate and point the way to resilient supply chains.

Food, water, energy, and basic necessities are most often delivered to urban dwellers through a value chain that includes private companies. These companies are an often ignored but vital part of enhancing resilience. They all face challenges due to the current and future climate - from droughts to floods, heatwaves to severe storms - and are in varying states of appropriate adaptation. Often businesses are not able to recover from extreme weather events at all, leaving the community they serve without critical products and services. Though it's very challenging to understand these risks, we mustn't walk away from this challenge.

Within the past 10 months, investment firms representing over $9.1 trillion of assets under management have asked for improved measurement of the climate risks, due to escalating financial and social pressure. In response, The Climate Service has assembled a team of experts including 3 IPCC Nobel climate scientists, economists, and technologists to use big data and machine learning to tackle the complexities of this challenge. Once businesses can measure their climate risks and resilience, they can better manage them for the good of the community. What you can’t measure, you can’t manage, so we’re enabling the measurement of resilience.

Because our software as a service platform enables the quantification of financial impact of climate, and can estimate the financial impact of risk mitigation actions, we can actually measure the dollars saved by our users. If, as a result of taking action, a customer’s “Value at Risk” decreases, we can measure that. When the risk decreases of companies providing services to a community, the resilience of the whole economic ecosystem increases. The primary beneficiary is the corporation who is our customer. The secondary beneficiary is their value chain: from suppliers to employees to their customers.

1) # customers

2) Total combined revenues of customers - Scale: Deploy to all 6000 companies, 800 investors, and 500 cities and reporting to the CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project).

Value at risk ($) saved. - Impact: Save $1B for companies using the tool.

We are using a proprietary approach involving empirical analyses of nonlinear sector-specific impacts derived from empirical data, combined with downscaled climate models and open-source economic models, to arrive at probabilistic financial metrics which are useful for risk management. Combining deep expertise from multiple fields with Moore’s Law improvements in computing power and machine learning has allowed us to crack this complex nut.

Global climate change is daunting. It’s inherently not human-sized. It’s beyond the scope of any individual, any organization, or even any nation to solve. However, if we properly align our resources, we can dramatically reduce our risks. This is where The Climate Service comes in. We are systematizing the “rules of the game” so that when companies compete financially, as they’re built to do, it inspires a “race to the top” that benefits the communities they serve. We are also devoted to underserved communities. And are working to build their resilience by pulling the biggest lever we know: financial results.

The platform is offered through the Internet as Software as a Service. While we don’t expect underserved community members to access it, we do expect the large businesses that serve them to use it. Our pricing strategy follows the “Tesla model” – start with high prices and low volume, and build the market to eventually allow low prices and high volume. We anticipate being able to offer some pro-bono services to the most at risk underserved communities.

Angel investment for product development and piloting, earned revenue from software sales & accompanying services, and then venture capital for growth: market rollout and scaling. Note the budget below is 2017 only. Also note that while various team members have been working on this concept for over 3 years, the company was only incorporated in July 2017.

1) Newness of the solution. While there are many competitors in the risk analytics field, and even the weather analytics field, this particular solution is new. Though investors and corporations are saying they want it, they don't have a direct point of comparison. This will require stellar product design and communication.

2) Newness of the science. We are stitching together multiple models and datasets, and though we have some of the world's experts on board, we'll still be inventing new techniques. Science, being a creative pursuit, resists schedules.

3) Being a startup.

https://twitter.com/TheClimateSvc

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesrmcmahon/

We’re tackling a gigantic challenge that the world’s biggest companies are asking for, and that if solved correctly, can move the needle on global climate change. We believe the power of exponential technology, combined with world-class expertise, can create meaningful change. We also know that we’re a small startup, and in a fragile phase. As a Harvard, MIT, Coca-Cola, and NOAA alum, I know the power of large world-class institutions. For us to succeed, we need to partner with much larger players who are aligned in purpose and spirit. That’s why we want to be Solvers.

The Collider – nonprofit innovation center providing support and collaboration.

Other major institutions are providing informal guidance and requirements, but not in a formal partnership. Working with two organizations on pilot projects.

427, Acclimatise, Resilient, ETIndex, Sustainalytics, Intersect, GCAP