Big Data, Climate Change and Geopolitical Threats

I was intrigued by an opinion piece in the November 5^th edition of the Boston Globe titled: “The Pentagon’s new threat” .  The article is written by Juliette Kayyem, a Globe Staff member, who comes to journalism by way of government service, including, most recently,  Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security.

The subtitle is “As weather worsens, environmentalists and the military find common cause”.   And it connects some dots that most of us have probably not given much thought: how do the impacts of climate change draw the military into action by creating unforeseen geopolitical impacts?    

If you followed the news around Hurricane Sandy, you probably saw that the military was hauling in massive generators and transporting power grid repair trucks from California to New Jersey.   You know that the National Guard was called up to help.  And there were lots of specific examples where military personnel were praised for helping to distribute food and help with cleanup: “Marines push into NYC to help with Sandy relief”.

 Of course, all of that immediate military support was clearly appreciated and has come to be expected by the public when severe disasters strike.  But Kayyem’s article goes on to point at another and more significant long-term concern for the military – and not just the US forces.  She writes:

“Take the Arab Spring, which people tend to view as having been motivated solely by political ideology. There is a growing body of evidence that the uprisings were aided by the Russian wildfires of July 2010. Close to 56,000 Russians died in the heat wave and resulting fires caused by extreme temperatures and draught. Russia was forced to impose a temporary export ban on grain. The price of food in global markets skyrocketed; in the Middle East, prices of staples such as bread rose 40 percent by December 2010. That month, in Tunisia, the Arab Spring began when a food stand owner set himself on fire.”

So, we are starting to see this in retrospect but what reasonable opportunity might there be for a more focused data analytics view to take these seemingly unconnected items and predict the most likely unforeseen outcomes?  Predict them sufficiently in advance to have reaction time to prepare.

 It is nothing new that natural disasters impact how people move and countries interact.  However, it is new that military installations and missions must take significantly greater care to consider climate shifts that may flood navy bases or cause political conflicts to flare.   What we can expect is that: 

“A major worry is figuring out under which circumstances combatant commanders — the military leaders overseeing geographic zones — will be required to utilize their troops and equipment to address the consequences of climate change.”

From an IT/Big Data perspective you might also ask how the existing Big Data capabilities of the military and weather services tie together internationally and help to further link practical actions that mitigate climate change impacts.  Or at least give us a more comprehensive understanding of how the impacts interlock to predict and prepare for the inevitable consequences.

You’ve heard the quote:  “ When a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world it can cause a hurricane in another part of the world.”

The question is, what is the likelihood of predicting that hurricane and everything it will impact?

Seems worth thinking about.