During the first half of 2021, there were eight natural disasters in the United States, each resulting in more than $1 billion of losses, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information<\/a>. Recovery from these droughts, fires, floods and other types of severe weather is extensive, and restoring affected\u2014and even destroyed\u2014communities is not only time-consuming, but incredibly costly. To ease some of the financial burden that comes along with these efforts, President Joseph Biden signed the \u00a0American Rescue Plan Act of 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As part of this initiative, \u00a0FEMA<\/a>‘s Disaster Relief Fund has allotted $50 billion to meet the immediate needs of state, local, tribal and territorial governments to respond to major disasters and emergencies. As these organizations and groups look for ways to address the globe’s most significant challenges, from natural disasters to hunger and even sustainability, they’re likely turning to resources that can physically rebuild their communities after<\/em> the damage is done.<\/p>\n

Though efforts may be focused on rebuilding, these communities can also take action that can aid in the mitigation of damage these natural disasters will cause. By leveraging the funds provided by the American Rescue Plan Act to invest in Internet of Things (IoT) solutions embedded with analytics, state, local, tribal and territorial governments can better prepare for and react to these incidents. Long-range, low-power IoT technology and advanced analytics has proven its effectiveness in these situations.<\/p>\n

By deploying end-to-end solutions, communities can adapt new models for IT, edge analytics and platform-based security and, in turn, harness streaming data and analytics to deliver meaningful results. This data, monitored and collected in real time, is essential and can make all the difference in safeguarding a community or leaving it at risk. The combination of IoT analytics and IoT technology accelerates intelligent decision-making and improves overall response time, which can be applied across multiple perils associated with flooding, forest fires, water quality and infrastructure resiliency.<\/p>\n

Flood Prevention
\n<\/strong>Ongoing climate change is leading to unusual weather patterns across the planet, causing a significant shift in behavior. Flooding is now increasing in terms of frequency and intensity, with the number of people harmed by floods expected to double by 2030, according to the \u00a0World Resource Institute<\/a>. Two billion people were affected by floods between 1998 and 2017, and flooding is now considered the most common type of natural disaster, per the \u00a0World Health Organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Detecting and preparing for a potential flood before it occurs cannot only save lives but prevent costly damages to critical infrastructure that can cripple an economy. With IoT-enabled sensors communicating over a redundant and resilient network, valuable data can be collected in real time, improving situational awareness and allowing critical decisions to be made in pressing situations. An advanced flood-detection solution powered by IoT analytics can monitor stream levels and alert officials to dangerous heights before it’s too late, thus empowering government entities to be more proactive toward flooding challenges than reactive.<\/p>\n

Livestock Wellness and Precision Ag
\n<\/strong>The world’s population is rapidly growing and is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in\u00a02050 and 11.2\u00a0billion\u00a0in\u00a02100, according to the \u00a0United Nations<\/a>. With this growth comes the demand from farmers to produce and deliver crops at that same growing pace. Although this pressure is immense, and despite less available resources, it’s critical that enough quality crops are produced to feed our growing world.<\/p>\n

Farmers are choosing IoT technology and advanced analytics to provide insights that can measure environmental conditions to influence crop production, while finding sustainable ways to feed the growing population. IoT analytics-enabled solutions are enabling these farmers to monitor their livestock, reduce environmental impact, maximize yield and minimize overall expenses.<\/p>\n

Energy Forecasting
\n<\/strong>There’s limited visibility into behind-the-meter assets which are needed to properly assess energy and water utilities globally. In turn, networks have been unsuccessful in forecasting, controlling and monitoring grids, leading to lack of data and expensive capital investments to make up for this. Organizations are turning to technology and advanced analytics to mitigate the potential risk that comes alongside the absence of data.<\/p>\n

By leveraging IoT technology and analytics, grid operations are improved and grid efficiencies are maximized, which results in mitigated risk to safeguard citizens. More and more companies and organizations are turning to the IoT, and by 2026, nearly 20 percent of smart meters deployed by energy and water utilities worldwide will be connected using non-cellular low power wide area (LPWA) networks, \u00a0ABI Research<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n

IoT technology and advanced analytics have the potential to aid communities in preparing for and preventing natural disasters of all kinds, and collected data is proving to be mission critical time and time again. By using funding provided by President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, groups can put action into their own hands to protect their communities and citizens before it’s too late.<\/p>\n

As the global manager for IoT partners and business development within \u00a0<\/em>SAS<\/a><\/em>‘s IoT Division, Tyson Echentile works with the company’s partners to explore the vast amount of data generated by the Internet of Things. Tyson collaborates with these partners to build and deploy IoT solutions that solve real-life problems across a variety of industries, including government, manufacturing, agriculture, energy and utilities. He earned his master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and his undergraduate degree from Towson University.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rich Lansdowne is a senior director for business development within \u00a0<\/em>Semtech<\/a><\/em>‘s wireless LoRa business unit and holds a master’s degree in information engineering from Southampton University. A 30-year industry veteran, he has extensive experience with wireless, carrier networking, mixed-signal system-on-chip design, low-power IoT and cloud services. He has spent the past 25 years with Semtech and has been 100 percent focused on LoRa and LoRaWAN since 2015. Rich has spent time building up Semtech’s LoRa Cloud Services in support of its “device to cloud” concept.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to funding provided by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, groups can protect their communities and citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196612,"featured_media":191653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_ppp_document_settings_meta":"","__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[473],"tags":[129,141,63,40],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n