Triangle IBMers put tech in hands of first responders, nonprofits for COVID-19 fight

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Day One Disaster Relief, Save the Children, Good360. These are non-profits, to name a few, that are taking advantage of IBM’s operations risks insights tool – for free.

A team of 25 local IBMers – including its senior state executive Tim Humphrey – helped develop the platform. And the tech giant is now making it available to disaster relief organizations on the front lines during the coronavirus epidemic.

“These non-profits need to make decisions fast; they need to have data that’s accurate so they can understand the true impact of events that are going on across the world,” Humphrey told WRAL TechWire by phone.

“Risk Insights helps with that. For them, we’re talking about saving lives.”

IBM’s Tim Humphrey.

The tool unifies a wide variety of data in real-time on a simple dashboard. It combines 150 data sources that are monitored hourly to synthesize millions of records and analyze a risk-event impact on 12,500+ sites worldwide.

“It enables them to be able to get a relief effort and supplies to the people that need them most,” Humphrey added.

“From our internal experience, Risk Insights helps save our supply chain millions of dollars internally every year. Every time we have a major event, we’re able to be ahead the chase for supply, and insure continuity of our supply chains. That’s the same type of value proposition for non-profits.”

This is one of several initiatives that IBM is leading during the coronavirus.

It has also released a new coronavirus tracker from the Weather Company (which is owned by IBM), to help families and communities track COVID-19 at the county level, which is more localized than many resources currently available.

IBM isalso leading a consortium of national labs and IT leaders to pool more than 330 petaflops of computing power to help researchers everywhere better understand COVID-19, its treatments and potential cures.