There are a lot of things computers can control, but the weather isn’t one of them.

Fortunately, with the right technology, predicting the weather is a much easier task. With IBM owning the Weather Channel, not only can people see upcoming weather trends, but the company created a COVID-10 hub for the Weather Channel website and app so that users can track cases around them via a map and take necessary precautions. And AI is playing a big role in predicting and consolidating the data.

“AI can take all of that data, bring it in, organize it, and then we could put it back out to the consumer in a very digestible way — and so we were able to do that,” said Sheri Bachstein, general manager of IBM Watson advertising and chief executive officer of The Weather Company. “We built an automated pipeline around that so we can make sure that it was updated. It was fresh and timely.”

Bachstein spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during IBM Think. They discussed COVID-19 maps, the Weather Company, AI and more. (* Disclosure below.)

The four components

For the COVID-19 map, there were four major components, or teams, needed to make the vision of an interactive COVID-19 map a reality. The first one was the Weather Company team building an API that could scale according to the weather. The second team was the Watson AI team, which mixed with the weather AI team to bring in and organize data.

Collateral infrastructure was the third component — the platform team built the architecture and the data repository on the IBM cloud.

“And then the last team was our data privacy office,” Bachstein said. “So making sure that that data was trusted, that we have permission to use it, and just really that data governance.”

IBM opened up its intellectual property as well, allowing researchers to use the technology and AI to study COVID-19 trends. Additionally, IBM teamed up with ad councils to assist in vaccine campaigns.

“And we delivered an ad unit that can dynamically assemble a creative in real time to make sure that the right message was getting out at the right time to the right person,” Bachstein concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Think. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for IBM Think. Neither IBM, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE