13SUEZ

THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

Digital technology and artificial intelligence offer immense potentialities to optimise flow management and resource use. But deploying them, to the benefit of all, also result in major dilemmas.

THE AVERAGE ANNUAL COST OF RESPONDING TO A CYBER ATTACK FOR A COMPANY

16.716

156

452,000 3.5

IN 2017

MILLIONS OF TEXT MESSAGES

MILLIONS OF EMAILS

TWEETS

MILLIONS OF GOOGLE QUERIES

1 MINUTE MIILLIONS $

TREND 03

(Accenture 2017)

(Global WEB index, 2017)

THE TRENDS OF A FAST-MOVING WORLD

MATERIALITY ASSESSMENT*

Ethics

Women s access to decision-

making

Optimised water and waste

management

Greenhouse gas emissions

Air pollution

Health, safety and reducing disturbance to residents

Reducing energy consumption

Integrating digital and smart

technologies

Capacity-building and knowledge

transfer

* The nine priority challenges for SUEZ from the materiality matrix (see details on p.71).

"Whoever masters artificial intelligence will rule the world," declared Vladimir Putin in 2017, as Saudi Arabia granted citizenship to a robot for the first time. While digital technologies bear the promises of a more efficient world, they also result in environmental costs, raise important ethical questions and requires the development of new skills to support their deployment without aggravating risks and inequalities. While blockchain will be able to secure transactions in a wider and wider variety of fields, including carbon markets, the world's cyber-dependency does not cease to increase.

In May 2017, the WannaCry virus affected over 300,000 computers in 150 countries, incurring the total closure of several industrial sites.

The frenetic pace at which technologies evolve represents an enormous challenge in terms of regulation, organisational adaptation and training for individuals. At a time when artificial intelligence could increase China's GDP by 1.6 points by 2035 (Accenture, 2017), countries such as Estonia are starting to legislate on algorithm transparency. In 2017, the city of New York also set up a team responsible for checking that the algorithms used by local public services respect the principle of equality between service users.