The next article is guest posts and opinions ting peng, Ecosystem manager in Skyx Network
What do you do when the weather app says light rain? It’s because of the app. But your legitimate anger is a bit misplaced. It can be a lot of data. In May 2023, fatal floods tore parts of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing hundreds of people. Most people never thought the water would come. Not because no one bothered us, but because the system was meant to warn the community.
This was not just a tragedy, it was a wake-up call. If you want to build true climate resilience in the 21st century, you must start by rethinking how you collect weather data. Good news? I already have the tools. Combination of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (depin) and artificial intelligence may be the best way to keep up with the climate you play by rules.
Too far, too late: Why weather warnings miss the mark
Most people don’t really understand how patchy the weather infrastructure today is. Many parts of the world have predictions Based on data from several official weather stations Often, they are miles away from the people they are supposed to protect. If you live near the station, that’s fine. But what happens if you don’t do that?
It was not only the water that made the 2023 flooding of Lake Kivu so deadly, but also the complete lack of early warnings. There was at least some weather data in Rwanda. Crossing the borders of the Eastern DRC, there was virtually nothing. There is no local sensor. There is no alert system. They never thought thousands of people were at risk living in flood-prone areas.
This is not uncommon. Around the world, hundreds of millions of people live in what can be called the “data desert.” It is a location where weather patterns are not monitored, reported, or predicted. According to World Weather Organization (WMO)60% of Africa’s population is not covered by the early warning system. As a supercharge as climate change Storms, droughts, floods, and those deserts are becoming traps of death.
ai can’t stop the rain, but it helps to see it coming
So how do you tackle this? What if we use thousands of small, distributed weather sensors instead of relying on a small number of government-run weather stations? That’s what Depin makes possible. It is a community-driven network in which individuals are encouraged to contribute to and do so.
When paired with AI, the possibilities are incredible. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s Technical paper on AI for climate action AI points out that it can aggregate and analyze real-time data from distributed sources, identify high local patterns, detect anomalies such as sudden temperature drops and unexpected rainfall, and provide alerts related to the person who actually has them.
What makes this model so powerful is the combination of scale and intelligence. The centralized system is always limited. However, decentralized networks can grow organically wherever people are willing to plug in.
Do not replace the system. I’ll upgrade.
Skeptics may argue that the use of distributed data and AI is messy or unreliable. Strict monitoring is required. However, AI is actually good at eliminating bad data, finding inconsistencies, and learning from patterns of thousands of sources. This is not to replace the national weather institutions, but to help them.
A weather agency can only have a large number of stations. However, by utilizing distributed networks, coverage suddenly increases. Their predictions improve. Their warnings become more sharp. Everyone wins. Climate disasters are becoming more frequent and more intense. The people most affected are often the least connected. If we continue to rely solely on a centralized system, we lose more lives.
You can’t control the climate, but you can control what happens next
We failed as a global community when people die not because of the storm, but because they didn’t know it was coming. That failure is inevitable. Extreme climates are hitting the most vulnerable people in the world with the most difficulties. And the cruel irony is that in many of these places sufficient weather warnings may have been issued… we don’t mind rethinking the current model.
I already have a tool to change the results. However, the tool will not work unless you use it. You need to decide. Do you need a weather system that serves everyone, or a small number of climate systems within radar range?
