Abstract: Systems and methods to generate business recommendations for specific business actions based on weather element forecasts and known relationships between a business activity and weather elements are provided. The system includes a confidence level filter, an opportunity matrix filter, a weather decision point generator, a business rule recommendation engine and a business rule knowledge database. Methods to generate a business recommendation for a business activity are also provided. The methods include receiving weather driven demand data, assigning opportunity measures to each of the data points, identifying weather decision points based on opportunity measures, and applying business weather rules to the weather decision points to generate business recommendations. In a further feature, a weather element relationship and/or a weather element forecast confidence level is assigned to each data point within the weather driven demand data.

Abstract: A weather-based financial index is based at least in part on weather. The index may take into account any of a variety of weather factors, such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, number of sunny or overcast days in a period of time, number of freeze days in a period of time, etc. Weather factor value(s) are combined with one or more financial components to provide the weather-based financial index. The index may be traded on an exchange, such as the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). The value of the index may be calculated based on any period, such as daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. Values of the index may provide insight into the direction of a component of the index, a market or industry corresponding to the component, or the index itself.

Abstract: Systems and methods to generate business recommendations for specific business actions based on weather element forecasts and known relationships between a business activity and weather elements are provided. The system includes a confidence level filter, an opportunity matrix filter, a weather decision point generator, a business rule recommendation engine and a business rule knowledge database. Methods to generate a business recommendation for a business activity are also provided. The methods include receiving weather driven demand data, assigning opportunity measures to each of the data points, identifying weather decision points based on opportunity measures, and applying business weather rules to the weather decision points to generate business recommendations. In a further feature, a weather element relationship and/or a weather element forecast confidence level is assigned to each data point within the weather driven demand data.