Our industrial year in review: 2024

Posted: December 05, 2024

It’s hard to believe we’re coming up on a new year! As we gear up for another year exploring the ways that data is transforming our industrial life, we thought we’d look back on some of the trends we noticed over the past year and point you to some interesting articles you may have missed.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

We know, we know, it seems like AI has been all anyone has been talking about this year. We won’t blame you if you’re getting a little tired hearing about it! And even though a lot of the talk around AI may sometimes be a bit over-hyped, one thing we did learn this year is that AI has been doing solid work within industry for years.

While industry is only just starting to incorporate the flashy new generative AI models, machine learning tools have been helping industries perform predictive maintenance and optimize processes and supply chains for years. This year, we learned how companies are using AI to:

• Design new pesticides that outsmart pest-resistance and are tailored to particular growing conditions
• Discover new materials to make better batteries and solar panels
• Predict where ore veins extend underground so miners can plan where to dig
• Engineer smarter, data-driven cities
• Streamline medical testing and predict which treatments will be optimal for individual patients
• Balance electrical grids
• And even predict earthquakes

The new focus on AI outside of industry has created better computing infrastructure, data and algorithms that we expect to continue increasing industrial efficiency in the new year. But that new AI infrastructure is energy intensive itself. We explored the complicated trade-offs around sustainability and AI in one of this year’s podcast episodes.

The skills gap

This is a biggie: industries across sectors are contending with aging experts, population shifts, and the new needs and expectations of younger generations. This year we saw how several industries are using digital technology to meet these challenges: 

• Seafarers are designing autonomous and remotely-controlled ships that require little to no crew
• Construction companies are managing sites remotely
• Undersea cable repair crews are using sensors to identify the locations of cable breaks so crews spend less time searching for them
  
• Manufacturers are connecting new workers with expert on-the-job training using AI-powered interfaces
  
• Mining companies are going a step further to create an industrial metaverse: digital twins that allow workers to learn how to handle new machinery and emergency situations in virtual-reality mines before they set foot in a real one. 

In the coming year, we’ll be looking into advancements in these technologies and how different industries start applying them to new tasks.

Water use and re-use

Water functions in industry as a common resource, ingredient, waste product, functional component, hazard, and an end in itself. We use water to generate energy, and energy to produce clean water. Keeping enough water available for all these different uses requires good data on how to optimally use, reuse and share it. We’ve learned about the very different ways industry uses water:

• Cooling AI servers
• Generating green hydrogen and ammonia
• Extracting fossil fuels and lithium for batteries
• And even detecting neutrons in vast underground science experiments

We also learned about some of the innovative ways industries are protecting water to make it available to everyone:

• Treating wastewater to make it potable
  
• Using sensor data from mussels and crayfish to monitor water quality at breweries and waterworks
  
• Navigating fish around hydropower plants
• Using data to become more resilient in the face of flooding from events like Hurricane Helene  

We’re excited to learn about more ways industries are sharing data with one another to help manage the limited resources we all depend on.  

Decarbonizing basic industry

Some of the most exciting developments this year are innovations that are decarbonizing fundamental industries:

• New processes for manufacturing cement
• Using hydrogen to smelt iron and create green steel
• New propulsion technology and zero-carbon fuels decarbonizing shipping
• Shutting down the UK’s last coal-fired power plant in October
  
• Synthesizing green ammonia to decarbonize agriculture
• Optimizing production processes to limit the impact of chemicals like ammonia and hydrofluorocarbons on climate change  

In the coming year, we’ll be looking out to see how industries continue to apply technologies like carbon capture and carbon removal to make progress toward net zero.   

If you have any stories you’d like us to cover, please drop us a note! We’ll see you in the new year.