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March 28th, 2023
A leading roofing materials producer needed help understanding forthcoming demand during hurricane season. The company was looking for more information to inform how much roofing material, and which type, to manufacture. Much of the demand for these materials is weather-based — after a major storm, people seek to rebuild homes and livelihoods, and companies and governments help to meet that need.
ClimateAi used its ClimateLens-Monitor tool to issue a forecast for the roofing materials company, assessing the impacts of the 2022 hurricane season for the demand for building materials, in order to execute better supply planning based on anticipated demand.
The ClimateLens platform successfully predicted a substantially elevated risk of hurricane impacts in Florida in September and well before Hurricane Ian became active (see the image below — ClimateAi predicted ~30-50% higher risk than normal in Florida). Because ClimateAi had translated this hurricane risk into probabilistic insights that were meaningful for the company (i.e. estimated damage and subsequent demand for roofing products), it was able to adjust its tactical decisions and get ready for the increased risk of a landfalling hurricane in or around Florida.
The image on the left shows a 60-80% chance of destructive winds (strong enough to damage roofs) in Florida. This is 30-50% higher risk than normal (as depicted in the image on the right).
In preparation, it gathered the relevant resources at its nearby facilities to ramp up the production of its Florida-specific roofing shingles once the hurricane was en route. Once the hurricane became active and was tracking toward Florida, they were able to take swift action to meet the increased demand whereas many other companies were left flat-footed. As their VP of supply chain put it, “ClimateAi’s forecasts allowed us to react much faster.”
The benefit of this quicker reaction? The manufacturer was able to capture an additional $15 million in sales as a direct result of preparing for the demand.
The ability of ClimateAi’s ClimateLens platform to simulate and probabilistically forecast the impacts of hurricanes over the coming season enables a new paradigm in disaster response efforts — helping companies and governments help people recover from storm damage more quickly, and capture new opportunities from weather-based sales demand.