Microsoft partnered with Satavia, a UK-based startup, to help decrease the impact of climate change by the aviation industry on the environment. To do this Microsoft will use its Azure cloud platform to support Satavia.
The aviation industry accounts to about 2.5% global CO2 emissions. However, by 2050 the industry emissions are forecast to grow up to 5% of the total global emissions.
As part of the partnership, Satavia migrated its high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure from the on-premises to the Azure cloud.
DecisionX platform
Satavia developed an AI-based platform called DecisionX. Using the platform, airline operators can create flight paths better suited to minimize the contrail clouds generated by planes.
When flying above 8,000-km, aircraft produce the contrail clouds. These types of clouds contribute to global warming by trapping heated air in the atmosphere. As a result, the contrails are responsible for 60% of the aviation industry’s total climate impact.
Satavia’s objective is therefore to provide flight operators with a smart flight planning tool. That being said, the DecisionX platform uses weather prediction modeling to build a high-quality replica of the atmosphere.
The platform can quantify the changes in clouds, wind speed, temperature, heat, pressure, and humidity, among other things. In addition, the platform helps aircraft operators to accurately quantify, analyze, and forecast contrail cloud emissions. As a result, this will allow them to optimize flight paths and reduce the amount of the contrails.
How Azure can help
To gather and store all this information requires space. This is where Microsoft comes in with the Azure cloud platform, as it is designed to store and analyze large amounts of data.
“Our model performs around 100 algorithmic computations over four billion model cells every 30 seconds for 26 meteorological parameters, generating one quadrillion computations per simulation day. That’s how we define ‘hyperscale’,” said Satavia CEO and founder Adam Durant, according to Microsoft.
The UK startup was delighted to work with Microsoft. In particular, Satavia praised the ability of Microsoft Azure to scale and provide high-performance was incredible.
The tech giant partnered with Satavia to show its own commitments to tackle climate change.
“Microsoft is committed to tackling climate change across the world; not only through our own actions but by making our tools available to help others reduce human-led impact on the planet,” said Michael Wignall, Azure business lead at Microsoft UK.