As the new Corona epidemic creates anxiety about the strength of the world's food supply chains, everyone, from governments and banks, heads to heaven for help.
James Bloomberg, founder and chief executive officer of Orbital Insight, a California-based big data company that uses satellites, drones, airships and geolocation data for mobile phones, is quoted by Bloomberg News. Surface, the inquiries received by the company regarding tracking food supplies have doubled over the past two months.
"We are helping supply chain managers, financial institutions, and government agencies answer questions that they had never imagined," said Crawford in a telephone interview.
The outbreak of the Coruna virus has sparked a new spike in the demand for alternative data, to highlight how the epidemic is affecting industries and commerce around the world.
This is particularly important in light of the numerous decisions of closures by governments around the world, the most stringent restrictions on the movement of people and the supply chains of goods and logistics everywhere, from Asia to Europe and the Americas.
The risks to food supply chains are becoming more noticeable, with millions of people worldwide affected by government-imposed closures, causing severe logistical consternation and the spread of infection, which also reaches workers responsible for obtaining food from farms. And moved it to the supermarket shelves.
Truck drivers in Europe have to wait a long time, as thousands of cargo containers crowd into a port for rice shipments in the Philippines, and curfews in Guatemala and Honduras may slow shipments of premium coffee.
In the United States, the world's largest manufacturer of pork products is warning of a shortage of meat, after the outbreak of the virus among employees led to the shutdown of a major meat factory, while India said shipments of sugar may arrive late, due to a shortage of manpower in ports and factories .
Orbit Insight customers ask for data such as: the date the cargo ships left the ports, the date the factories close, and the number of passengers traveling through the airports.
Crawford said that as HIV rates continue to rise, customers have in recent weeks begun to focus on tracking grocery stores, wholesalers, and distribution centers, to monitor everything, from food supplies to the production of medical supplies in specific factories.
And not only is the shift in alternative data to those who want to follow up the supply chains, as companies seek to make deals at a time when the current quarantine prevents the realization of meetings, so it tends toward unusual ways to obtain more information.
On the other hand, Unilever NV, which relies on Orbital Insight, to improve tracking of raw materials in its supply chains, uses technologies such as "network crawlers" and "artificial intelligence" to verify millions of cargo deliveries. And follow up with thousands of suppliers to identify potential risks or shortages.
For his part, Mark Engel, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Unilever, said that the consumer goods giant is looking for warning signals by analyzing delivery patterns of shipments, to see if suppliers are struggling to fulfill orders and verify the financial safety of suppliers, so they can quickly Find alternatives.