Essential Things to Know About Hyperlocal Forecasting

Uncertainty has been a pervasive global force since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the crisis continues, businesses need reliable analytical forecasts in order to anticipate and respond to a growing number of rapidly changing variables. 

Predicting future needs based on traditional risk/demand sensing and forecasting is no longer a viable approach. That’s why IBM Services created IBM Disruption Recovery Insights. Capitalizing on the nuanced combination of industry expertise and machine learning that only IBM Services can deliver, the offering helps decision makers make sense of today’s business environment.

Below are selected capabilities of IBM’s Disruption Recovery Insights:

• Offers Unmatched Expertise and World-Leading Technology – IBM is distinguished by its unique combination of deep industry and analytics expertise with sophisticated, open-source and platform-agnostic AI to transform structured and unstructured data into actionable information. IBM experts like Mike Haydock, IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist, has been at the fore of creating and applying sophisticated data models to help businesses solve today’s real-world problems. Hear what Mike and Cathy Reese of IBM Services have to say about helping our clients manage uncertainty and change.
   
• Delivers Bespoke Insights – Our industry experts work with clients to identify their specific challenges in anticipating and responding to shifts in demand. We create novel approaches to forecasting that use real-time data from diverse sources, and deliver new customizable, actionable insights—not off-the-shelf generalities.
   
• Provides Early Warning Signs – Disruption Recovery Insights augments our clients’ historical data with curated external data sources at the national, regional and hyperlocal levels. Data insights from weather, socioeconomic developments (including unemployment statistics), news and social media help businesses identify, understand and prepare for shifts in demand. These insights include such elements as early warning signs of the next COVID wave, changes in consumer sentiment and the impacts of weather volatility, so clients can make more reliable decisions to address these challenges.
   
• Capitalizes on Advanced Machine Learning – We’ve developed four open-source, AI-driven indices that help accelerate decision making. Disruption Index measures local economic growth to deliver forecasts based on weather and socioeconomic data. Mobility Index analyzes commuting and travel patterns by county or zip code. Safety Index leverages social media to measure consumer sentiments about using such services as restaurants, grocery stores and public transportation. Resurgence Index uses historical and real-time disease progression data to predict the next wave of the COVID-19 pandemic at the county level.

Rapidly changing factors such as market contraction, shifts in trade policy, ongoing climate change and potential civil unrest may impact food production, the supply chain, retail viability and travel in unique ways. But by combining industry expertise with the power of AI-enabled analysis of structured and unstructured data, IBM provides industry-specific market forecasting that’s current, agile and relevant to our clients’ immediate and future needs.