Beyond Recovery: How Digital Technology Can Build Real Climate Resilience

Why It Matters

Climate change is no longer a distant threat. It is an ongoing, intensifying process that is already reshaping economies and societies.

Digital tools can help, but only if we move beyond short-term fixes and use them to transform how we live and work.

Key Takeaways

• Climate resilience must combine national digital infrastructure with local knowledge and community action.
• Businesses need to balance reactive adaptation with proactive mitigation of emissions.
• Digital platforms can reshape supply chains and even consumer behaviour to reduce climate risk at scale.
  

Climate Change Is Not a One-Off Crisis

Most resilience research focuses on sudden shocks — a pandemic, a cyberattack, a financial crash. Climate change is different. It is not a single event but a long-term, human-driven process, punctuated by extreme weather and ecological tipping points.

In Digital Resilience for the Climate Crisis: A Multi-Perspective Analysis, five research teams come together to rethink what “digital resilience” means in this context. They define it as the capabilities organisations and societies develop through digital technologies to absorb shocks, adapt to disruption and transform towards new, stable states.

The authors argue that we cannot tackle climate change from one angle alone. Its causes and effects cut across natural systems, technologies, institutions and human behaviour. That means resilience strategies must also work across these levels, from local communities to global supply chains, and must address both adaptation to impacts and mitigation of root causes.

What Floods in Brazil and Indonesia Teach Us

To ground their ideas, the researchers examine flood and landslide management in Brazil and Indonesia. Both countries rely on digital sensor networks and national monitoring agencies to track environmental risks. These represent a centralised model of resilience, where data flows from sensors to government agencies and early warnings flow down to communities.

Yet communities on the ground also draw on local knowledge, environmental cues, past experience and informal communication networks. This is a localised model of resilience.

Brazil’s approach leans more heavily on centralised analytics. Indonesia places greater emphasis on two-way communication between regional agencies and communities. Each model has strengths and weaknesses. Centralised systems bring technical expertise but may overlook local nuance. Community-led responses are context-sensitive but may lack resources.

The key lesson is that digital resilience works best when these models are combined. National data infrastructure should integrate feedback loops, local insight and community ownership. Digital systems must not replace local knowledge; they must strengthen it.

Bringing Nature Back Into the Equation

Traditional thinking about digital systems focuses on people and technology. The natural environment often sits in the background. The authors argue that this is a mistake.

They propose an “eco-sociotechnical” perspective, which treats nature, society and technology as intertwined systems operating at different scales. A sensor may capture real-time river levels, but it cannot by itself account for decades-long climate cycles or ecosystem shifts. Resilience strategies must therefore align short-term responses with long-term environmental processes.

The researchers also introduce a simple but powerful framework. Digital climate action can be:

• Reactive or proactive, and
• Focused on adaptation or mitigation.

Many current efforts are reactive adaptations, for example, using data analytics to respond to extreme weather. While important, this approach can leave underlying emissions untouched. True resilience requires proactive mitigation, such as using digital tools to decarbonise operations, redesign production systems or predict and prevent emissions before they occur.

Digital technologies should not merely help organisations recover from disruption. They should help shape a lower-carbon future.

Digital Platforms, Circular Economies and Consumer Action

The study highlights how digital tools can enable circular business models. Digital twins, sensor networks and shared data platforms can track materials across supply chains, reduce waste and improve resource efficiency. By lowering dependence on scarce inputs, firms reduce both environmental impact and exposure to future shocks.

However, these systems raise challenges around data governance, information sharing and trust. To succeed, companies must collaborate across sectors and develop common standards. When done well, digitally enabled circular economies can deliver both mitigation and adaptation benefits.

Digital platforms can also influence consumer behaviour. Incentive schemes such as carbon point systems reward low-carbon choices in everyday life. When embedded into daily digital routines, these programmes can shift habits, build collective awareness and create shared norms around sustainability.

In this way, digital tools do not only support organisational resilience. They can shape societal resilience by influencing how people think and act.

Business Implications

For business leaders, the message is clear.

First, resilience strategies must look beyond emergency response. Firms should assess how digital investments support both adaptation to climate impacts and mitigation of emissions.

Second, companies need to work across levels. National infrastructure, corporate systems and local communities must connect through transparent data sharing and feedback loops.

Third, circular and data-driven business models are not just sustainability initiatives. They are strategic tools to reduce risk, secure supply chains and strengthen long-term competitiveness.

Finally, digital transformation must integrate environmental thinking from the outset. Treating nature as an external factor will lead to blind spots. Firms that align technological innovation with ecological realities will be better prepared for an uncertain future.

Authors & Sources

Authors: Wai Fong Boh (Nanyang Technological University), Nigel P. Melville (University of Michigan), João Baptista (Lancaster University), Friedrich Chasin (Offenburg University of Applied Sciences), Flavio Horita (Federal University of ABC), Anne Ixmeier (Ludwig‐Maximilians‐Universität München), Steven L. Johnson (University of Virginia), Wolfgang Ketter (University of Cologne), Johann Kranz (Ludwig‐Maximilians‐Universität München), Shaila Miranda (University of Arkansas), Ning Nan (The University of British Columbia), Brian T. Pentland (Michigan State University), Jan Recker (University of Hamburg), Sepide Sadeghi (Toronto Metropolitan University), Saonee Sarker (Pamplin College of Business), Suprateek Sarker (University of Virginia), Juliana Sutanto (Monash University), Ping Wang (University of Maryland), Wahyu Wilopo (Universitas Gadjah Mada)

Original article: MIS Quarterly

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