Tech
The Weather Network launches its first advertising campaign using an AI-assisted Avatar
OAKVILLE, ON, June 11, 2024 /CNW/ – The Weather Network has launched a first-of-kind ad campaign using an AI-Assisted Avatar of their own Content Creator and Presenter, Rachel Schoutsen. The Weather Network partnered with Home Hardware Stores Limited to showcase storefront and local store callouts where Rachel’s AI-Assisted Avatar covers an Ontario summer forecast, plus a summer sale call to action, designed to drive traffic to Home Hardware locations across Ontario.
Watch this video to see Rachel Schoutsen’s avatar in action
By leveraging advanced AI technologies, The Weather Network is now able to deliver hyper-local forecasts on a larger scale, providing communities and local economies with opportunities to prepare for and respond to weather-related events. The Weather Network’s mission is to keep its users safe and informed with accurate and localized weather information.
“This partnership puts Home Hardware front and centre when Canadians are engaging with weather content and planning for the summer ahead,” said Simon Jennings, CRO, The Weather Network. “Canadians want to know what to expect as they plan their busiest social days and holidays and can purchase the right products for the weather forecast in their area.”
“Home Hardware is a business built on serving small communities across the country and we are proud to support The Weather Network’s innovative efforts to do the same through AI technology,” said Laura Baker, Chief Marketing Officer, Home Hardware Stores Limited. “Our more than 1,000 stores and the Dealers who operate them make it their mission to provide comprehensive support for all our customers’ home improvement needs within their communities. That means helping Canadians complete and enjoy their outdoor home improvement and yard maintenance projects while also preparing for any inclement weather events.”
With a focus on helping users and businesses make informed decisions using cutting-edge technology, The Weather Network is committed to ensuring the use of avatars in its promotional materials aligns with the highest ethical standards. All promotional materials have a clear disclaimer to ensure its viewers are well informed of AI-created content. In addition, employee avatars are used with their consent and an agreement to participate.
“We are excited about this latest innovation and the opportunities it will provide to our consumers and businesses,” said Maureen Rogers, Managing Director Editorial & Public Alerting, The Weather Network. “As with any new product we launch, we value their input and will use it to continuously improve the product to meet their needs and deliver products that exceed their expectations. We are delighted to have partnered with Home Hardware on piloting this new product with us.”
The Weather Network recently launched Your Weather Assistant, a generative AI tool to transform the way people consume weather information. The introduction of its newly developed AI-Assisted Avatar demonstrates Pelmorex Corp.’s, owner of The Weather Network, commitment to innovation as it evolves into an AI-frontiered weather and climate organization.
About Pelmorex Corp.
Pelmorex Corp., founded in 1989, is an international weather information and data management company. Pelmorex owns and operates the weather brands The Weather Network, MétéoMédia, Eltiempo.es, Clima, and Otempo.pt. It also operates Canada’s National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System, part of Alert Ready. Through constant innovation and entrepreneurship, Pelmorex has grown to reach consumers around the globe, has become one of the largest weather information providers and has broken new ground in providing data solutions and insights to businesses. Through harnessing the value of weather, Pelmorex is driven to make the world smarter and safer for consumers and businesses.
To learn more, visit pelmorex.com and follow us on X (platform formerly known as Twitter), Instagram and LinkedIn.
About Home Hardware Stores Limited
Founded 60 years ago in St. Jacobs, Ontario, Home Hardware Stores Limited is proudly Canadian and the country’s largest Dealer-owned and operated home improvement retailer with more than 1,000 stores operating under the Home Hardware, Home Building Centre, Home Hardware Building Centre and Home Furniture banners. The Home Hardware Dealer network improves life at home by providing superior home improvement retail experiences through helpful advice and a deep understanding of the communities they serve. Home Hardware Stores Limited is designated as one of Canada’s Best Managed Companies and recognized as one of Canada’s Best Employers. More information about the company is available at homehardware.ca.
SOURCE Pelmorex Corp.
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Automotive
EPA removal of vehicle emissions limits won’t stop the shift to electric vehicles, but will make it harder, slower and more expensive
The EPA’s move to rescind the 2009 “endangerment finding” and roll back vehicle emissions limits won’t stop the shift to electric vehicles—but it will slow adoption, raise costs, and increase climate and public health harms.
Alan Jenn, University of California, Davis
The U.S. government is in full retreat from its efforts to make vehicles more fuel-efficient, which it had been prioritizing, along with state governments, since the 1970s.
The latest move came on Feb. 12, 2026, when President Donald Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency issued a new rule rescinding the landmark “endangerment finding,” and reversing various emissions limits on cars and trucks. The 2009 finding stated that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. If the new rule stands up in court and is not overruled by Congress, it would undo a key part of the long-standing effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.
As a scholar of how vehicle emissions contribute to climate change, I know that the science behind the endangerment finding hasn’t changed. If anything, the evidence has grown that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet and threatening people’s health and safety. Heat waves, flooding, sea-level rise and wildfires have only worsened in the decade and a half since the EPA’s ruling.
Regulations over the years have cut emissions from power generation, leaving transportation as the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
The scientific community agrees that vehicle emissions are harmful and should be regulated. The public also agrees, and has indicated strong preferences for cars that pollute less, including both more efficient gas-burning vehicles and electric-powered ones. Consumers have also been drawn to electric vehicles thanks to other benefits such as performance, operation cost and innovative technologies.
That is why I believe the EPA’s move will not stop the public and commercial transition to electric vehicles, but it will make that shift harder, slower and more expensive for everyone.
Putting carmakers in a bind
The most recent EPA rule about vehicle emissions was finalized in 2024. It set emissions limits that can realistically only be met by a large-scale shift to electric vehicles.
Over the past decade and a half, automakers have been building up their capability to produce electric vehicles to meet these fleet requirements, and a combination of regulations such as California’s zero-emission-vehicle requirements have worked together to ensure customers can get their hands on EVs. The zero-emission-vehicle rules require automakers to produce EVs for the California market, which in turn make it easier for the companies to meet their efficiency and emissions targets from the federal government. These collectively pressure automakers to provide a steady supply of electric vehicles to consumers.
The new EPA move would undo the 2024 EPA vehicle-emissions rule and other federal regulations that also limit emissions from vehicles, such as the heavy-duty vehicle emissions rule.
The possibility of a regulatory reversal puts automakers into a state of uncertainty. Legal challenges to the EPA’s shift are all but guaranteed, and the court process could take years.
For companies making decade-long investment decisions, regulatory stability matters more than short-term politics. Disrupting that stability undermines business planning, erodes investor confidence and sends conflicting signals to consumers and suppliers alike.
A slower roll
The Trump administration has taken other steps to make electric vehicles less attractive to carmakers and consumers.
The White House has already suspended key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that provided tax credits for purchasing EVs and halted a US$5 billion investment in a nationwide network of charging stations. And Congress has retracted the federal waiver that allowed California to set its own, stricter emissions limits. In combination, these policies make it hard to buy and drive electric vehicles: Fewer, or no, financial incentives for consumers make the purchases more expensive, and fewer charging stations make travel planning more challenging.
Overturning the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding would remove the legal basis for regulating climate pollution from vehicles altogether.
But U.S. consumer interest in electric vehicles has been growing, and automakers have already made massive investments to produce electric vehicles and their associated components in the U.S. – such as Hyundai’s EV factory in Georgia and Volkswagen’s Battery Engineering Lab in Tennessee.
Global markets, especially in Europe and China, are also moving decisively toward electrifying large proportions of the vehicles on the road. This move is helped in no small part due to aggressive regulation by their respective governments. The results speak for themselves: Sales of EVs in both the European Union and China have been growing rapidly.
But the pace of change matters. A slower rollout of clean vehicles means more cumulative emissions, more climate damage and more harm to public health.
The EPA’s move seeks to slow the shift to electric vehicles, removing incentives and raising costs – even though the market has shown that cleaner vehicles are viable, the public has shown interest, and the science has never been clearer. But even such a major policy change can’t stop the momentum of those trends.
This is an updated version of an article originally published Aug. 5, 2025.
Alan Jenn, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Consumer Corner
How agentic AI is changing the way contractors assess storm damage
Hours after a storm, teams of professionals need to move quickly to assess the damage. That work used to take days of site visits and time-consuming analyses. Now, a roofing contractor can pull up a color-coded map of every roof over 15 years old within two miles with agentic tools.
How agentic AI is changing the way contractors assess storm damage
(Tiffany Miller) Hours after a storm, teams of professionals need to move quickly to assess the damage. That work used to take days of site visits and time-consuming analyses.
Now, a roofing contractor can pull up a color-coded map of every roof over 15 years old within two miles with agentic tools. An insurance claims manager can see which homes have the worst damage and need to be inspected first. A government assessor can map which neighborhoods were hit hardest. As hurricane season opens June 1, Eagleview Horizon, an agentic AI engine, shows how predictive AI is giving these professionals a head start.
Why the trades are under pressure
Billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the U.S. have nearly tripled since the 2000s, now averaging 19 per year, according to NOAA. The trades are paying for it. Insurance carriers are required to handle more claims. Contractors race to keep up with demand. And government planners assess wider damage zones due to population increases. For insurers, that pressure is already showing. AM Best reported that the homeowners insurance segment had its toughest first quarter in five years, driven by January wildfires in California and tornado outbreaks across the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. That hit a property and casualty insurance market where U.S. premiums crossed $1.05 trillion in 2024, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
For the majority of the 100,000-plus contractors in the $25 billion U.S. roofing industry, the work hasn’t changed much. They still spend hours canvassing neighborhoods street by street. Adjusters drive door-to-door. Government planners wait for damage reports to come in. As storm seasons grow more intense and claims volume rises, that model is starting to crack.
A shift across multiple industries
AI can find information faster, but newer systems can also turn a question into a workflow.
For early adopters, that is changing more than storm response. Commercial roofers can use these tools to pinpoint structural changes and complete annual inspections more safely. Infrastructure managers can track changes over time to flag maintenance needs. Property managers can identify which assets in large portfolios are approaching maintenance risk before they fail.
What may matter most is who can do this work. Until recently, sophisticated property analysis required trained specialists and could take weeks. Now any contractor, adjuster, assessor or planner can begin with a plain question and get a clearer view of where to act first.
What this means for storm season
Trades will keep facing issues caused by more storms, and time will tell whether new tools can spread fast enough to meet the overwhelming demands of the industry.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
SOURCE:
Eagleview
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Tech
Drones paired with AI could help search‑and‑rescue teams find missing persons faster
AI-powered drones equipped with thermal and infrared imaging are transforming search-and-rescue operations, enabling teams to locate missing persons faster and assess their condition—including signs of injury, consciousness, or life-threatening temperature changes—in real time.
Last Updated on May 16, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Adeel Khalid, Kennesaw State University
A combination of infrared imaging, thermal imaging and color cameras on an uncrewed drone, along with an AI system to interpret the data, can help emergency responders and search-and-rescue teams locate, identify and track people who have gone missing in the wilderness. The experimental system helps responders pinpoint where a missing person is and determine whether they are hurt or even alive.
People who get lost or hurt while exploring nature can become stranded for days. Rescue teams often use drones to look for the person or signs of their whereabouts. The small drone my colleagues and I built at my lab at Kennesaw State University flies autonomously using a grid search pattern. It sends live video and images to a ground station operated by the rescue team.
When the AI system finds a person, it analyzes images to determine whether the individual is upright or lying on the ground. It segments parts of the person’s body, identifying the person’s head and the body’s position. It then zeroes in on the forehead. It extracts forehead temperature readings, pixel by pixel, from the imaging data to estimate forehead temperature. We have two papers detailing these findings accepted for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aviation Forum 2026 conference.
Our AI model then assesses whether the person is conscious or unconscious and identifies abnormal temperatures that could indicate heat stress, hypothermia or other physical complications, or death – all vital information for a search-and-rescue team.
In field trials we have conducted, the system has provided consistent temperature readings of the heads of volunteers from our research team who have walked out into a variety of environments, under different conditions.
Why it matters
It is critical to get accurate and timely information on the whereabouts of a missing person. The likelihood that the person will survive decreases steeply as time passes.
An AI-enhanced drone can make search-and-rescue operations significantly more efficient than sending teams of people out into the environment to search on foot, especially in poor weather conditions or under thick foliage. Rescuers who know whether a person is conscious or unconscious can also better gear up for what they need to do to retrieve the person and administer aid. Our technology could save lives.
What other research is being done
Search-and-rescue personnel use various kinds of drones, but the machines often lack the ability to positively identify humans, especially under thick foliage, in bad weather or when the person is lying down or unconscious. The AI-based technology we have developed overcomes those challenges.
Better sensors that are very lightweight, that can function at night or in rain, and can see more clearly through thick foliage could further improve our drone and drones used by others. Researchers are devising AI-powered sound recognition for detecting screams for help, advanced thermal imaging for better nighttime vision and autonomous drones that could act as first responders.
Also under development are drones that can carry heavy payloads, such as flotation devices, fly for up to 14 hours or perform real-time mapping of the ground below.
What’s next
One of our next steps is to have multiple drones fly together and autonomously coordinate search-and-rescue operations among themselves. This will allow the technology to cover a much larger area, perhaps hundreds of square miles.
We are also designing a large drone that can carry up to 110 pounds (50 kilograms) of payload and stay aloft for an hour.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Adeel Khalid, Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Kennesaw State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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