AI Helps Cities Predict Natural Disasters

Give artificial intelligence some of the credit. Hydro One used an electrical-outage prediction tool developed by International Business Machines Corp. IBM -1.14% that combines AI technology and the resources of IBM's Weather Co. subsidiary. The tool helped predict the severity of the storm and the locations that would be hardest hit, so Hydro One knew where to position 1,400 front-line staff who were needed to restore power and to handle the nearly 130,000 customer calls that came in during the outage. IBM's outage-prediction tool is also being used, with 70% accuracy, by other cities throughout North America to predict power outages as far in advance as 72 hours before storms are expected.