Weather volatility is on the rise and businesses are forced to mitigate mounting risk. According to a report by global insurance provider AGCS, insurers annually paid out $15 billion for catastrophic weather events between 1980 and 1989; between 2010 and 2013, annual payouts increased to $70 billion. Today, 70% of the world’s businesses are exposed to “severe weather risk.”
As climate change creates unpredictable weather patterns, even small, unexpected weather events or slight deviations in temperature and precipitation can have devastating financial impacts on individual businesses and entire industries. An estimated 30% of U.S. GDP is affected by weather and climate. The impact is much more severe in emerging markets where many businesses are uninsured or underinsured.
Traditional insurance products that use human adjustors can’t keep up with the needs of today’s businesses. But insurtech platforms are already offering a more viable alternative. Arbol’s blockchain-based parametric products leverage Chainlink’s widely adopted oracle network to determine payouts based on objective third-party, publicly verifiable climate and weather data. The founders of Arbol Inc. are now set to release dClimate, a fully transparent, decentralized marketplace for climate data, forecasts and models, powered by Chainlink.
Sid Jha, Founder and CEO of Arbol Inc. and a founding partner of dClimate, said dClimate is the first decentralized marketplace that directly connects publishers of climate data (academic institutions, researchers, government agencies, independent scientists, etc.) with data consumers (enterprises, governments, academic institutions, etc.) in a single, user-friendly platform that benefits all participants.
Conceived as an alternative to the status quo of climate data, dClimate is designed to satisfy the global need for accessible, accurate, immutable climate data, forecasts and models.
“This massive market remains highly fragmented and difficult to navigate for even some of the most gifted data scientists and climate researchers,” Jha said. “It is served by a mix of government and private sector providers with little standardization or transparency, which makes it difficult for companies that build with climate data to leverage this information to build products that help companies proactively fight climate change.”
He described dClimate as “the culmination of three years of work” to create a “massive, decentralized infrastructure of immutable climate data as a standalone network,” where platforms like Arbol and other businesses, entities and stakeholders can shop for the data they need and scientists, researchers, academics and data scientists can publish and monetize their work.
“By making data and models more accessible and easy to use for consumers and by giving publishers a platform where they can house and even monetize their work product, dClimate will make it easier for businesses to proactively plan for disasters and build climate resilience while incentivizing much-needed innovation and advancement in the climate data ecosystem.”
dClimate will not only serve insurtech platforms like Arbol (an anchor client for dClimate) that leverage smart contracts and Chainlink oracles to offer parametric insurance; “every business or entity that is financially exposed to weather risk, especially those that are located in areas that are prone to disasters (Florida for hurricanes, California for wildfires) need and can use platforms like dClimate to save resources and lives,” Jha said.
“Construction companies can use dClimate to plan projects around weather and logistics companies need good forecasting to optimize shipping routes to deliver goods on time. Governments rely on climate data for everything from research to mapping out how to budget for defense, foreign affairs, and infrastructure programs. And outdoor event planners and sports teams need good, reliable forecasting to keep talent and fans safe in the event of severe weather.”
Built with blockchain and powered by Chainlink, dClimate’s platform is accessible to anyone who works or builds with climate data, with a simple UI, easy fiat on-ramp and a user-friendly, blockchain agnostic structure. In Jha’s vision, “The ultimate aim is for dClimate to be like an Amazon or iTunes store for climate data.”
To learn more about dClimate, visit their website, Twitter, Medium, Reddit and Telegram, read the dClimate whitepaper and check out the free tier of the REST API for data consumers with access to decades of historical weather and climate data.