Innovation Incoming: Weather Warnings from AI celebrated the achievements of Google DeepMind, the 2024 recipient of the MacRobert Award, the UK’s longest running and most prestigious prize for engineering innovation, hosted by BBC Weather presenter and meteorologist Tomasz Schafernaker.
This panel discussion delved into Google DeepMind’s ground-breaking GraphCast technology and how it utilises AI to provide weather forecasts with unprecedented accuracy.
Our panel of experts provided insights into the development and functionality of GraphCast as well as discussed the challenges overcome during its creation, the technology's real-world applications, and its potential to save lives and mitigate the economic impact of extreme weather events.
The panel consisted of:
- Professor Sir Richard Friend FREng FRS, Immediate Past Chair, MacRobert Award Committee
- Professor Penelope Endersby CBE FREng, CEO, The Met Office
- Dr Joshua Macabuag FREng, Co-Founder and CPO, Renew Risk
- Peter Battaglia, Research Scientist, Google DeepMind
Tomasz Schafernaker
Peter Battaglia
Professor Penelope Endersby CBE FREng
Professor Sir Richard Friend FREng FRS
Dr Joshua Macabuag FREng
Dr Joshua Macabuag is Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Renew-Risk and Engineering Manager at Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters (SARAID). He has provided technical advances in catastrophe risk modelling, quantifying disaster risk for renewable energy (via his own company, Renew-Risk) and for developing countries (via the World Bank). Josh is also an exceptional engineering leader in disaster response, leading and growing the UK’s largest engineering team for urban search and rescue. He has deployed to the Nepal earthquake (2015); Hurricane Irma (2017); Albania’s earthquakes (September to November 2019); lead the UK support team for the Beirut port explosion (2020), and also deployed to Haiti in August 2021 and Turkey in March 2023. He inspires young and practising engineers and has had films and videos commissioned for This is Engineering and the Institution of Civil Engineers.