International Group of Artificial Intelligence in partnership with GEC Media Group and Embassy of India in Bahrain, successfully hosted a virtual summit on The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Sustainability and Renewable Energy on 28 April. The conference focused on the rise of artificial intelligence and its wide impact on numerous sectors and sustainable development. The virtual summit continued for two hours.
By now global organisations have understood the importance of tracking, measuring, and reporting scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 emissions, and the importance of 2030 and 2050 milestones. In order to reach net zero by 2050, emissions must be halved globally by 2030.
Organisations therefore have a clear and urgent need to measure the full scope of their emissions before they can effectively manage them. While progress is being made in direct environmental impacts, only 15% to 40% of reporting companies are engaging with their suppliers on climate change, deforestation, and water security, amongst others. It is urgent that companies mobilise measurements and action down the entire supply chain to achieve the scale required to avert environmental crisis.
The event was joined by top industry leaders and participants including:
- His Excellency and Ambassador, Piyush Srivastava, Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of Bahrain
- Dr Jassim Haji, President, International Group of Artificial Intelligence
- Vineet Agarwal, Partner at SG Analytics
- Dr Shahnawaz Khan, Assistant Professor at the School of ICT, Bahrain Polytechnic
- Dr Chiranjiv Roy, Senior Vice President for Data Science & Analytics at SG Analytics
- Sini Raj Pulari, Faculty of EDICT at Bahrain Polytechnic
- S Hussaini, CEO Almoayyed Computers Middle East
- Moderator, Arun Shankar, Editor GEC Media Group
- MC, Dalal Buhumeida
Speaking at the event, His Excellency and Ambassador, Piyush Srivastava, Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of Bahrain congratulated the international group of artificial intelligence for selecting such a relevant and interesting topic.
He also added, “As we all know India and Bahrain enjoyed deep rooted historic and civilisational ties and people to people connect. India is also one of the largest trading partners of Bahrain.”
Dr Jassim Haji, President, International Group of Artificial Intelligence praised His Excellency and Ambassador, Piyush Srivastava, Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of Bahrain for his presence at the event and his participation. He also highlighted benefits to both countries since activity started in India in the eighties.
Achieving sustainable development goals through Data and Analytics
Vineet Agarwal, Partner at SG Analytics highlighted ESG matters now more than ever and said, “Today more than 80% of the global companies are reporting their physical market and climate related risks with all the stake holders and we have also seen a massive change here over the last decade and so.” He added, there is a huge impact of climate related events on global economy.
AI for Sustainable Future
Speaking at the event, Dr Shahnawaz Khan, Assistant Professor, School of ICT at Bahrain Polytechnic said, “Sustainability is meeting the need of the present without compromising ability of future generation to meet their own needs. Nowadays, almost 140 developing countries in the world are meeting their development needs.” He further stated that regarding sustainability there are three different aspects including environmental aspect, economic aspect, and social aspect.
Analytics and Sustainability
Dr Chiranjiv Roy, Senior Vice President, Data Science & Analytics at SG Analytics remarked artificial intelligence is the end product, while analytics is what you build. He also talked about the data science lifecycle.
Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture Sector
While addressing the webinar, Sini Raj Pulari, Faculty of EDICT at Bahrain Polytechnic said we are at beginning of a golden age of artificial intelligence, but we have still only scratched the surface of artificial intelligence. She also talked about the major issue to be addressed in agriculture sector and said, “When we talk about the lifecycle of agriculture there are different stages which comes out with problems but when we look at the traditional issues which we always face due to climatic factor, poor quality crops, these are the very common issues in agriculture sector.”
Question and answer session
Vineet Agarwal, Dr Shahnawaz Khan, Dr Chiranjiv Roy, Sini Raj Pulari and S Hussaini, joined virtually for the question-and-answer session. The questions from the attendees included:
- What are the robotic and AI solutions suitable for small scale farming in India and GCC?
- How do I implement a cost-effective solution using AI and robotics for large scale farming in India?
- As a start up in AI, how should I select the use case and get funding?
- How can I build personalization in education?
- Please recommend how to build speed, scale and adoption of AI applications in sustainability and renewable energy
- Are technology vendors investing in building application solutions for sustainability?
- What are the negative sides of AI in sustainability and politics?
Dalal Buhumeida ended the virtual summit with her closing speech and vote of thanks.
