IBM’s Jeff Talley: Common Data-Driven Tech Could Help Response Efforts During Hurricane Season, Pandemic

Jeff Talley, vice president of global public sector at IBM, said there is a need for a more streamlined data-driven platform that could help government agencies and private sector entities respond to hurricane-related disasters during the coronavirus pandemic by allowing them to “visualize a common operating picture,” Nextgov reported Tuesday.

“I don’t want to give you the impression that we don’t have the visualization capability of [Federal Emergency Management Agency] or other organizations. We do,” Talley told the publication. “But we don’t have the ability yet to have a common platform where that is shared amongst national, state and local governments, as well as say, the private sector, the nonprofits, and don’t forget the for-profit private sector. They’re critical.”

Talley, a retired Army lieutenant general and a global fellow with IBM’s Center for the Business of Government, said the technology platform should leverage artificial intelligence and integrate data from the electrical grid and other information about medical supplies, roads and specific geographic locations to facilitate disaster response during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said IBM is using existing technologies to develop such a platform in collaboration with the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.