The COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of ordinary life. Entire industries have been disrupted, and millions of people around the world are adjusting to a new daily routine. No corner of modern life has been unaffected by COVID-19 with the blockchain industry both negatively and positively affected. How so the latter? The blockchain is being seen as a way for many economic sectors to recover from COVID-19’s detrimental impacts. Similar to how shipping APIs help the transportation sector, the blockchain is being used to help supply chains bounce back.
Global shipping has been massively disrupted by the coronavirus and by each country’s response to the pandemic. Supply chains are no longer running smoothly as different precautions put in place try to slow the spread of the virus. Shipping products from overseas requires jumping through new hoops to meet health and safety guidelines from different countries. Customers aren’t sure how much stock retailers have, and retailers aren’t sure when they will receive new inventory. Even critical supplies like personal protection equipment (PPE) are being held up because of shipping complications. The standard paper trail businesses use to track shipments has become disjointed. But the blockchain is being used to rectify supply lines.
Using the blockchain provides trust and verification through a digital paper trail that is dependable and secure. When information is stored using the blockchain, the previous data within the chain can no longer be altered. Blockchain essentially locks the data, so the next person adding to the chain can do so with confidence knowing that the entire transaction is secure. This technological security gives users the ability to maintain visibility throughout the entire supply process. Users securely monitor quality control, worker standards, and performance tests. When everyone involved in the supply chain knows what is going on, the likelihood of mistakes happening decreases. For example, the permanent audit trail the blockchain gives buyers of medical equipment the power to check the provenance of all parts in the transaction. This works equally well whether the transaction is for masks, ventilators, or the ingredients for pharmaceuticals. Adding blockchain technology, therefore, produces safer and more dependable shipments that can be easily tracked through the entire supply process.
The blockchain can also be used for contact tracing. As governments try to track exposure to the virus they walk a fine line between data collection and privacy protection. By using blockchain processes, contact tracing can happen securely and privately. That’s because the blockchain does not have a central authority, and users ultimately control their own data. That means users participate in contact tracing data collection without compromising their privacy. Voluntary data collection only works if users feel safe enough to provide information and by giving privacy control to users, data collectors increase the odds of more people participating. Contact tracing only works with maximum participation to make the data set large enough to detect infection spread patterns.
Various companies across the world are working on contact tracing programs using the blockchain. Privacy experts in Europe propose using a decentralized privacy-oriented proximity tracing system that uses both Bluetooth and the blockchain. This proposed protocol was designed by a handful of research institutes in Europe with the express goal of ensuring user privacy and preventing the collected data from being misused. Another German tech company has created a blockchain contact tracing app that promises users absolute privacy. The decentralized biobank Genobank is building a blockchain contact tracing platform that lets users acquire anonymous COVID-19 tests and send the information to connected organizations.
Some consider the disrupted Wisconsin Democratic primary a missed opportunity to test a blockchain-based digital voting system. In the face of a pandemic, this type of voting would have been much preferred to having citizens standing in lines exposing themselves to COVID-19 which unfortunately led to new cases.
Digital voting is sometimes referred to as e-voting or i-voting. The “e” stands for electronic, and the “i” for the Internet. The biggest concern for either electronic device voting or casting a ballot through a web browser is the security of the transaction. Countries like Estonia have had e-voting since 2005, and i-voting since 2007. The system doesn’t use the blockchain but rather encrypted national ID cards. Cards can be stolen or lost. Other European countries have trialed electronic voting and subsequently abandoned the practice. But in the face of a global pandemic, security experts believe using the blockchain to create a digital voting system would solve the card issue in Estonia, and provide absolute privacy for every citizen casting a ballot. Using the blockchain eliminates dependency on the foibles of electronic voting machines. The transaction of each ballot cast is fully secure. A blockchain-based vote would require three distinct pieces of user authentication: a unique ID number, a one-time use password upon registering to vote, and an electronic ballot containing a URL specific to the locality of the voter and a QR code.
]]>More and more private business is realizing the need to take climate change seriously and start planning for the impacts it could have on them. Much of the current focus has been on mitigating the effects, but companies now need to start adapting to climate change impacts that are inevitable. Elevated temperatures, droughts, flooding, hurricanes and climate change events are already hurting businesses with these incidents likely becoming more frequent and severe no matter what organizations do to become more sustainable.
Here are six things businesses need to do to adapt to the risks of climate change.
The first step in addressing any vulnerability is assessing risk. Businesses need to evaluate how both gradual and extreme impacts could affect them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides resources that are a great starting point for understanding the effects that climate change could have on a company.
Various factors impact a firm’s vulnerability to climate impacts, including location, the resources it uses and the impact that has on the environment. Moving forward, these considerations should play an integral role in all relevant risk assessments.
Companies must prepare for what climate change will do to weather. That means making physical improvements to facilities and infrastructure to protect against damage from floods, winds, violent rainstorms, hurricanes and other weather extremes. Utilities have been at the forefront in preparing for what a warming atmosphere will bring and are investing heavily in recent years in resiliency upgrades, such as replacing wooden utility poles with steel ones and installing controls that can prevent outages from spreading. In extreme cases, companies may need to move facilities to lessen their risk. They will also have to look at safety standards to incorporate managing climate change vulnerability. And likely they will also have to take steps to mitigate their financial risk including taking on additional insurance.
Businesses are bound to face risks to supply chains from climate change. In assessing these risks they will have to look at jurisdictional regulation of energy. They will also have to look at how extreme weather could impact offshore production. A good example occurred in 2011, when flooding in Thailand caused significant production disruption for technology companies including Apple, Samsung, Acer, and Lenovo, and car manufacturers, Honda and Toyota. The flooding took two months to clean up causing the equivalent of approximately $44 billion USD in economic losses. Ensuring that facilities such as these are more resilient to disasters is critical. Also, businesses need to look at diversifying the supply chain, spreading out to more sites where there is less climate risk so that they cannot be impacted by a single source bottleneck.
Recent assessments estimate that having access to climate and hydro-meteorological information, as well as early warning systems, can save between $596 million and $3.5 billion of assets and hundreds of lives each year. Companies need to become members of organizations that can help them predict potential disasters and to invest in forecasting technology, where possible.
Nonprofit organization, BSR notes that telecommunication companies, particularly, are investing in enhanced forecasting and warning systems. NTT Group provides earthquake early warning technologies to alert employees if a disaster occurs. And KT plans to collaborate with its stakeholders to develop disaster-forecasting systems through real-time monitoring utilizing sensor networks.
It is, of course, not enough to know when disasters may be approaching. You also need to have plans in place for how you will react to recover from climate change events. Putting such policies in place, and training employees on them need to be prioritized.
Collaborating with other organizations by sharing lessons learned can help in developing industry best practices. Various industries have already started cooperating this way.
Companies must respond to a growing public awareness in the marketplace about environmentally harmful products and practices. To address this risk, companies are abandoning fossil fuels as a primary energy source and seeking out ways to make products more environmentally friendly.
Growing numbers of businesses are investing in greener practices with companies like Apple, Google and Ikea, committing to sourcing all their energy requirements from renewables. Companies are also working to produce more sustainable products, both to protect the environment and also because consumers have indicated their willingness to spend more on green products.
Business leaders around the world are waking up to the reality that climate change causes risks to the future of their companies. Taking action to adapt to climate change vulnerability is now seen as an important indicator of their future business success.
