Doha should promote an AI (artificial intelligence)-powered energy management system in its hydrocarbon sector as KPMG in Qatar outlined sector-specific digital opportunities in times of conflict.
Stressing that Qatar has the potential to enter the post-conflict period with stronger digital foundations as compared with its regional peers; it said “the challenge is not to start from zero, but to accelerate, integrate, and prioritise.”
Qatar’s energy sector is the backbone of the economy, which makes it vulnerable and essential, making digital investments potentially yield significant systemic benefits, it said in a latest report.
To maintain operations during disruptions, it is important to minimise dependency on onsite personnel and speed up recovery processes; it said, highlighting the vital role that could be played by digital enablement.
In this regard, KPMG said there was a need to “promote an AI-powered energy management system with real-time infrastructure monitoring to detect the unplanned downtime before disruption which can improve the productivity and support infrastructure resilience.”
There was also need to promote the simulation technology to help explore the interdependencies and damage scenarios and model recoveries to optimise the ‘back to normal’ scenarios.
Finding that not all sectors are equally equipped to achieve resilience through digital transformation; it said in critical industries such as energy, finance, manufacturing, wholesale & retail trade, and logistics, the adoption of digital solutions can greatly accelerate the recovery process and strengthen resilience, enabling entities to respond more effectively to disruptions and adapt rapidly to changing environments.
In the finance sector, there was a need to accelerate the implementation of digital payment infrastructure and cross-border settlement systems to maintain financial flows in case physical banking operations are disrupted.
It also suggested expanding digital trade finance solutions to support small and medium enterprises and corporates when the traditional financing is inaccessible.In the case of manufacturing sector, KPMG recommended extending the adoption of AI- powered digital platform for inventory management and demand forecast across the manufacturing facilities to mitigate the out-of-stock risk.
The need of the hour was large scale adoption of a digital supplier diversification platform that automatically identify and qualify alternative suppliers when primary sources are disrupted, it said.
On wholesale and retail logistics, KPMG suggested promoting digital national infrastructure that integrate the various parties involved in the end-to-end SCM process for B2B sector.
It also suggested adopting advanced AI technology to predict the logistic and custom disruption and offer what if scenarios to reduce the impact and promote resilience. Recommending digital business continuity, KPMG said there was a need for large scale adoption of unified national crisis communications platform integrating government, private sector, and civil society channels to ensure timely, accurate, and seamless information flow which leads to other disruption.
There was also a need to adopt national business continuity registry platform allowing organizations to declare operational status, access government support programmes; promote AI-powered public information systems capable of detecting and countering misinformation during conflict periods, protecting public confidence in institutions and supply chains; and large scale adoption of digital continuity protocols for critical financial system operations, ensuring that core banking, payments, and settlement functions can operate under degraded physical infrastructure conditions.
