Perspective: How a booming “environmental intelligence” sector is confronting extreme weather and climate change
, “More than 4 in 10 Americans live in a county that was struck by climate-related extreme weather last year … and more than 80 percent experienced a heat wave.”
That news is not good, but considering environmental intelligence advances, there is some good news. Businesses are applying publicly available data and models for a slew of new products and services enabling governments, businesses and consumers to navigate many of the challenges facing the world today. These products won’t bring back homes or lives lost, but they do provide ever-improving tools for reducing future risk and uncertainty.
Numerous companies are demonstrating what the private sector does best: rapid development of broad customer-focused solutions with the capability to scale nationally and globally. In turn, they are impacting hundreds of millions of customers daily and economic assets in the trillions. Open data policy is one of several factors influencing the rise of successful environmental intelligence companies. Others include market demand from an information-hungry society, partnerships with leading multinational companies, deep domain expertise tied to former federal data experts and access to private investment dollars.Since 1980, floods have cost Americans more than $1 trillion, making flooding the most expensive natural disaster in the United States.