News roundup: Hurricane Harvey, emergency management, controlling data
IBM’s take on this week in news
This week in brief
- Hurricane Harvey strains emergency management
- Texas oil industry overwhelmed
- Connected appliances: the data is key
Numbers of the week
Hurricane Harvey strains emergency management
Now the most extreme rain event in U.S. history, Hurricane Harvey has caused unprecedented and catastrophic damage across Texas. With the crisis still unfolding and Louisiana now being hit hard, the full scope of human tragedy and heroism is yet to be revealed. With many lives upended, it’s important that we first ask how we can help now, and then question how we might better mitigate and respond to such disasters in the future.
One critical aspect of Hurricane Harvey, along with other extreme weather events such as Hurricane Katrina, is the demand on emergency management to quickly respond to those who need help most. As an emergency unfolds, the ability to glean information from people on the scene is important, but dispatch centers are often overwhelmed with high call volumes.
In one example, people trapped by Harvey were posting to social media instead of calling the U.S. Coast Guard.[1] Emergency phone lines were severely congested and desperate victims didn’t have the time or even phone battery to keep calling until they got through.
The Angle
- On Sunday night, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said 911 operators had received 56,000 calls in less than 24 hours. Police and fire departments had received nearly 6,000 calls for rescues and by Tuesday had rescued more than 13,000 people.[2]
- Artificial intelligence with speech and natural language processing capabilities can help dispatchers manage calls more efficiently so that critical information gets passed through faster to first responders.
- “[U]sing social media as a platform for emergency calls can lead to calls for help getting overlooked, misidentification, the spread of false information and even fraud,” according to TechCrunch.
- First responders don’t have the bandwidth to monitor all social posts. Social media is not just a firehouse of information — key details can be missing or inaccurate.
- Want to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey? Go here for ideas on how to help.
Harvey overwhelms Texas oil industry
The rain and flooding damage from Harvey has also impacted the epicenter of the Texas oil refining industry, which may take months to recover. The area processes about a third of U.S. oil and the hurricane has shut down 17% of refining capacity.[3] That may ultimately raise the price of gasoline 5-15 cents per gallon in the United States and oil prices in Europe, as refineries there need to replace the diesel imported from Texas.[4] Beyond refinery disruption, the horrible impact of Hurricane Harvey may cause companies to reevaluate the risk in their supply chains, as disasters are no longer regionalized, but global in nature.
The sudden nature of natural disasters can leave businesses and cities unprepared and individuals vulnerable to harm. Early warning can give people the crucial time they need to act. Weather prediction models based on artificial intelligence (AI) can provide advanced warning. These systems can analyze huge volumes of disparate information — including weather data, social feeds and news reports — to get a comprehensive view of the storm’s trajectory.
Connected appliances: control the data, enhance the customer relationship
When supermarkets started rolling out loyalty cards years ago, food and beverage brands quickly realized they were sacrificing a valuable resource: data. There’s a treasure trove of insights about customer purchasing behavior and preferences hidden in the data collected by those cards. Unfortunately for the brands, they now had to pay supermarkets for the data instead of collecting and analyzing it themselves. It became apparent that if you owned the data, you owned the customer relationship.
That’s analogous to what is currently happening in the world of connected appliances. Companies may cede control of the data and customer relationships by partnering with personal assistants like Google Home and Amazon Echo.
“Knowing how customers actually use the connected products enhances a company’s ability to segment customers, customize products, set prices to better capture value, and extend value-added services. Smart, connected products also allow companies to develop much closer customer relationships,” according to the Harvard Business Review.[5]
In short, owning the data from connected products gives brands the ability to improve the customer experience, develop new revenue streams and make better products, faster.
As for customers, they simply want the seamless user experience of a connected device ecosystem. They don’t want to use different systems to talk with different smart devices. With 470 million connected appliances predicted by 2020, appliance companies would be wise to get their data ducks in a row.
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[2] http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-houston-harvey-911-20170827-story.html
[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-harvey-impact-texas-oil-refineries-2017-8
[4] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/28/hurricane-harvey-affect-texas-oil-industry-242103
[5] https://hbr.org/2014/11/how-smart-connected-products-are-transforming-competition
