Devastating winter storms a wake up call for Portugal’s government and economy

Storms, technology and AI topped the agenda of a discussion on the Future of Tech Driven Marine Protection at the Ireland-Portugal Business Network 7th Sustainability Conference whose central theme was the Ocean and the Blue Economy.

This technology is transforming ocean protection by enabling real-time response, predictive modelling, and global collaboration “in ways that would have been unthinkable a decade ago” said moderator and IPBN board member Mario Gago, founder of Pink Room Software.

However, he reminded that all the technology hadn’t been enough to prevent the ecological disasters of the winter storms that battered Portugal’s coastline in January and February.

“We witnessed the back-to-back devastation of Storm Joseph followed by Storm Kristin and these were a wake-up call for our industrial infrastructure, our coastal communities, and our economy”, he said.

Sharing information

Agostinho da Silva is a board member at Catolica Porto Business school, MARE, Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre and specialises in Industry 4.0. He is also advising the government on the restructuring of Portugal’s Central Region which suffered the worst effects of the winter storms.

“I’m still in the middle of this storm, so to speak (his new apartment in Leiria was severely damaged) and it has caused around €6Bn of direct damage and probably another €6Bn of indirect damage,” he said.

“This storm destroyed in just two hours approximately one-third of the wealth this region creates in a year,” he added.

And he warned soberly that if the region were to be hit by such storms every five to 10 years Portugal would “struggle to create enough wealth to pay the bill.”

But such storms can also present opportunities according to Pedro Costa a geologist from the University of Coimbra and a world expert in tsunamis and storm deposits who has been advising the Portuguese government on helping the Leiria region – among the worst hit by the storms – to recover.

“It’s a question that keeps me working and gives me a job, and also gives opportunities to companies to produce products that will help society to be more resistant to such extreme events,” he said.

Pedro added that people sometimes forgot that “we share the Atlantic with other countries” which needed to share information.

The storms expert said that sea level changes were not a problem for Portugal, but increased storm surge water levels and wave heights were. “If we put all this together this is a threat for our coastline and sandy beaches”.

“The water temperature is rising and hurricanes at 20º North affect Portugal as tropical storms and are becoming stronger with a greater impact,” explained Pedro Costa.

And warned: “We are not Florida yet, but in the long term we will have these kinds of events which will cause sediment and sand deficits.”

Pedro pointed out that Portugal was facing tipping points in costal areas from the intensity of the storms. “The problem is that sandbanks build up causing big waves, the sand banks go further off-shore with the result that sand is lost” which was bad for beaches that attract tourists.

On the other hand, England would produce good wines as the weather gets warmer, but Portugal could have 40 days in the summer with temperatures over 45ºC. “We need to prepare our society for that.”

Renting AI intelligence

Lee Bristow, an expert in AI and tech-driven protections and author of Human AI Alliance, whilst not an environmental expert, does help organisations establish the required governance when it comes to AI governance, technology and its implementation.

“What’s coming from an AI perspective is that we’re going to be able to rent intelligence focused on particular areas maximized for telemetry based on information from the sea.”

This could involve satellites feeding changes within weather patterns, buoys measuring sea temperature, wave telemetry, and information from shipping and harbors, for example in the case of rising tides, moon phase changes, with all these data points feeding in data to a larger AI model that is continuously growing and improving.

Taken together, all of this information could be used by the insurance industry, for example, to bring down insurance costs.

“AI starts to action something and becomes useful because of this data. By creating applications we can bring the data to everyone, commercialise it for big tech, use it for managing insurance and predicting potential damage and the industries likely to be most affected,” Lee explained.

Giving insight on how technology could create resilience for communities, Agostinho da Silva, also a marine engineer, agreed that ships were so much more than carriers of passengers and goods, but could also serve as stations collecting real-time information that could be used by AI and other systems “for our protection”.

“I’ve been advising the government and European Union about this. The Blue Economy comprises 11 sectors related to the seas, the oceans, and coastlines. The Portuguese shore is actually a 50km (shipping) lane which is effected by the ocean and these moving stations on vessels can provide real-time data about this lane”, he concluded.

Source and Credits: IPBN Sustainability Conference.