Met Office CIO Charles Ewen: "If I've learned one thing, it's to be very cautious about predicting the future"
Ewen leads IT at the Met Office, and ironically acknowledges that there will always be a number of elements we can neither control or predict
The Met Office is the UK's national weather service, and expert in forecasting change. The organisation invests heavily in simulation and emulation, and has to look beyond short-term weather events to take a more holistic view of the effects of climate change. It's a lesson that many business leaders would do well to learn.
Computing's Noel Anderson talked to Met Office CIO (and Delta subscriber) Charles Ewen, about what other industries can learn from the Met Office's work, the need to be ready to act quickly to handle change, and the need to renew trust in science.
Ewen notes that the Met Office has been doing forecasting for "a long time," and relies on both simulation (applying the known laws of physics to weather events to see how they are likely to develop) and emulation (statistical representation). The latter technology involves heavy use of machine learning, which Ewen notes that every industry is slowly coming to grips with. One of the issues with ML is the potential for drift, and it's important to know how to handle that when it occurs:
"Machine learning is really all about building an algorithm that can recognise a pattern in a dataset. If the link is robust between those datasets that feed the machine learning algorithm and the system that those datasets represent, then we're all good. But people talk about drift, for example; there are many reasons why a machine learning algorithm might drift over time, but one of them is that the datasets being derived from the system no longer represent the system itself. So, you need to go back and retune and retrain an algorithm - [although] you'd like to think the laws of physics aren't changing!"
ML and other technologies continue to improve the accuracy of the Met Office's predictions, but Ewen warns against complacency: "I've learned one thing being a technologist, and that's to be very cautious about predicting the future, ironic as that may seem." He points out that there will always be uncontrollable external factors; no prediction can account for everything.
The coronavirus was one such uncontrollable element, and those organisations that survived it best were not necessarily those that spent huge amounts on forecasting. Instead, they were firms with a purpose-driven culture. That makes it "really easy, even in uncertain times, to keep that focus on what's important," said Ewen. "Whereas I think if you're unfortunate enough to work in an organisation that doesn't carry that purpose, then you get knocked into second-order debates around profit and revenue. Of course, they're really important, but organisations whose raison d'etre is around those things without any broader purpose or vision, if you like, they've also found it very problematic."
To hear more from Charles Ewen on the critical uncertainties facing businesses today; new ways of working and their effect on mental health; and his preferred vision of the future of technology, watch the video now - or click here to read the transcript on the Delta website.