Saudi Arabia and its fellow GCC members, addressing climate change has become an integral part of their economic development and diversification strategies. This approach to growth, which centers on sustainability, draws on many approaches, most notably digital transformation. By deploying digital tools such as big data, analytics, the cloud, and artificial intelligence (AI), organizations can accomplish more while consuming less. When implemented broadly across economies, these optimizations can enable the sustainable growth that the region and the world need. This is crucial, given that our urgent need to address climate change is happening in a context where demand for almost everything, from electricity consumption to healthcare services to aviation, is rising.
In the energy sector, software solutions help grid operators manage electrical systems more efficiently and reliably, even as utilities add large amounts of variable renewable energy and work to control emissions and costs. For power plants, asset performance management (APM) software is giving operators the tools to monitor equipment and system health and to predict asset failure. This software takes data from local assets, assesses it using algorithms trained on data from millions of operating hours of similar equipment, and helps utility companies reduce unscheduled downtime and maintenance duration. Insights from this software also can lead to increased plant efficiency, improved performance, and reliability for power generation technologies as diverse as gas, wind, solar and hydro. By combining data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual and digital technologies, clinicians spend less time on bureaucratic tasks like patient data capture and more time with patients. Emergency departments can diagnose and triage faster by using AI to assist clinicians in assessing medical images. AI also makes it possible to reduce the radiation dose needed for medical imaging scans and to shorten scan durations, allowing more patients to be assessed. In aviation, digital transformation is helping airlines carry more passengers and cargo, while managing emissions and driving operational efficiencies. This is possible through software that analyses data from across an airline’s fleets, and then finds ways to improve aircraft fuel consumption and design flight paths that optimize routes to take less time, use less fuel and cut carbon emissions. From the aircraft flight deck to the hospital operating theatre to the wind turbine generator, digital transformation is showing itself to be a critical tool in helping organizations embrace sustainability.