How AI Can Mitigate the Effects of Natural Disasters on Your Business

In the last decade, there have been numerous extreme weather events that have had significant impacts on individuals and businesses in Florida and in other places in the world. We’ve seen hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. These events often come with little warning and can create serious and long-lasting havoc. New technologies, like artificial intelligence, are being developed to help mitigate – or even eliminate – the negative impacts of these types of extreme events on your business.

In an extreme weather event, there are four steps that need to be taken to regain operational stability and understand how long that might take.

1. Receive notification and predictions about an impending event

Notifications and warnings about an upcoming event typically come from the weather service, local governments, local news services or official online sources. A forward-looking view based on conditions in the past that look similar to the category of event that is expected to occur generally come from non-public or subscription-based data services.

2. Understand the expected impact

The next step is to understand what is expected to occur from a practical point of view. Weather events like hurricanes and floods will disrupt transportation routes and threaten the electrical infrastructure, including airline routes. Businesses need to understand the expected immediate impact, the potential of the event to expand and the challenges that need to be addressed. A business needs to understand what is required to regain operational stability based on the scale and severity of the impact. Local issues like electrical infrastructure damages may be fixed in hours or days, whereas it could take months or even years to repair roads and bridges.

3. Determine the expected impact on your supply and logistics chains

It is essential that a business be prepared by understanding which locations, suppliers, sub-suppliers, customers and transportation routes will be impacted. This is where the complex nature of global supply chains and logistics networks can make things complicated. Disruptions can come at any point in your supply or logistics chains. You need a comprehensive supply chain mapping complete with geolocation data as well as logistics mapping software.

4. Gain insights from data analysis to form an action plan

Here are some examples of ways artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help mitigate the impact of a catastrophic event.

• Create a vendor master that includes billing and “ship from” locations for all suppliers. Map all suppliers and create a hierarchy of related companies.
• Set up alerts with updates from weather service data. Use natural language processing (NLP) to convert alerts into data on projected locations and weather conditions.
• Project the severity of the impact at each geographical location and predict how each location will be affected using a trained machine learning system.
• Overlay your comprehensive supplier map with an impact map of geographic locations and disruptions, this identifying which suppliers are in the storm’s path.
• Use supply chain software to identify issues related to inventory and orders as a result of the weather event.
• Identify potential alternate suppliers with adequate inventory to fulfill your order.
• Construct revenue loss projections based on current storm projections and your financial system.
• Use detailed models of weather systems, supplier locations, inventory levels and integration with your financial systems to identify the best possible scenario to mitigate losses.

New technologies, like AI, can help companies address complex and incredibly difficult problems, often before they occur. There are many more ways risk intelligence offers cutting-edge solutions and innovative possibilities in the business context.

Lanier Upshaw, Inc. provides important information on emergency preparedness to help you protect yourself, your family, your property and your business. Contact us here to learn more about how we can help in an extreme weather event.