Vodafone has announced that people will be able to contribute their phone’s idle resources to investigate how climate change is affecting cyclones and other extreme weather through the DreamLab app. Vodafone is working in collaboration with Imperial College London to launch the project.
If Vodafone’s DreamLab project rings a bell, we covered it at the start of the pandemic as it was helping to find cures for COVID-19. With most vaccinated and the pandemic seemingly winding down, DreamLab users will be looking for other things to help with – such as what impact climate change has on extreme weather.
Commenting on the new project and its significance, Professor Ralf Toumi, a physicist at Imperial College London, said:
“We are delighted to be working with DreamLab users to build the world’s largest public database of simulated tropical cyclone events. Hundreds of millions of people are impacted by tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons every year, and the damage costs billions of dollars. They are relatively rare – but climate change is likely to increase their frequency and intensity. By simulating natural disasters, we can protect more people by learning more about them. We can even predict the impact global warming will have on them in the future.”
The DreamLab app is available for download on iOS, Android, and macOS worldwide. So far, it has racked up millions of downloads essentially giving the combined network the computing power of a supercomputer, making it an ideal tool to help tackle difficult problems.