IBM to invest $200 million dollars to advance research into climate change

IBM is set to invest $200 million to encourage scientist to propose climate change research projects and utilise their vast computing resources.

Efforts to analyse and limit the harm associated with climate change are about to be intensified by IBM. IBM is promoting the utilisation of its World Community Grid, – an IBM Citizenship initiative that provides researchers with enormous amounts of free computing power to conduct research. IBM have emphasised the benefits of The World Community Grid as it has already helped researchers to solve a variety of complex research problems (IBM, 2017).

The World Community Grid harnesses the processing power of devices that belong to volunteers who sign up to the service. This allows for experiments to be conducted on these devices when they are not in use. There are currently around 750000 volunteers.

The enterprise is intended to find solutions to energy problems faster and identify key areas that ought to be tackled. Therefore, finding more efficient types of solar, wind and tidal energy could all feature within this type of research. In addition desertification, human and animal migration, temperature forecasts, crop success rates, and many other areas associated with climate change, could all be researched using this facility.

Furthermore, IBM will allow researchers the opportunity to access their cloud storage facilities, which would provide an efficient and effective data storage facility. Should researchers want access to valuable meteorological information, connected to climate change, they will also be given the opportunity to have access to The Weather Company, which is also part of the IBM business.

IBM have highlighted the benefits of this facility, by identifying research that was conducted by MIT researchers, using the World Community Grid. This research resulted in finding more suitable types of carbon compounds that could be used to create more effective solar cells. The World Community Grid has already had great benefits for the scientific research community:

Since its founding in 2004, World Community Grid has supported 28 research projects on cancer, HIV/AIDS, Zika, clean water, renewable energy and other humanitarian challenges. To date, World Community Grid, hosted in IBM’s Cloud, has connected researchers to one half-billion U.S. dollars’ worth of free supercomputing power. More than 730,000 individuals and 430 institutions from 80 countries have donated more than one million years of computing time from more than three-million desktops, laptops and Android devices. Volunteer participation has helped researchers to identify potential treatments for childhood cancer, more efficient solar cells and more efficient water filtration.and other humanitarian challenges. (IBM, 2017)

Such ‘in kind’ investments, by IBM, will shape the future of environmental research. Not only that, but IBM’s commitment to resolving concerns, associated with every aspect of our lives, will be assisted by the World Community Grid and its volunteers.