Predicting Climate and Geopolitical Risks for Financing Energy Needs in Africa

Within two months, the team built two risk scoring systems, using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) models for predicting climate and geopolitical risks. The project results are used to support financing institutes in West and Central Africa make more informed decisions.

The project partnerm Finz is French startup with the mission to make the world a better place by enabling climate adaptation and reducing carbon emissions.

The problem 

Finz focuses to help global decision-makers, such as government entities, banks, or foundations, to finance autonomous and light units for water or energy efficient accesses, in urban and rural contexts. It is now widely accepted that climate change and geopolitical issues pose serious threats to the availability of essential-to-life resources, such as water or energy. 

In emerging countries (Africa or Southeast Asia), access to resources for human or animal consumption, and agriculture needs to secure food, are keys. In developed countries, climate change threatens the availability of water (e.g. California) and will figure a big issue for all inhabitants on Earth tomorrow. 

Finz believes to help decision-makers act and predict risks of damage to assets or populations.

The project outcomes

More than 40 technology changemakers worked on publicly available datasets such as satellite imagery, land cover data, and news outlets, to extract relevant data points. The team developed models to transform these points into useful information sources and compute climate change or geopolitical-driven risk scores.