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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

From floods to fires: Investing in applied sciences that make communities extra resilient


Excessive climate occasions have gotten extra frequent, intense, and expensive. In 2024 alone, world pure disasters resulted in an estimated $368 billion in financial losses, with 60% of those losses uninsured, highlighting a considerable safety hole (Insurance coverage Enterprise). Trying forward, a 2024 World Financial Discussion board report predicts that by 2050, climate-intensified pure disasters might result in $12.5 trillion in financial losses worldwide (World Financial Discussion board).

On the identical time, company publicity to local weather dangers is anticipated to triple by mid-century, with over $1.14 trillion in market worth in danger for firms listed on main world exchanges (Axios).

Nevertheless, there may be additionally an enormous alternative on the horizon. Based on a 2025 report by FIC and Bain & Firm, world revenues from local weather adaptation options are anticipated to develop from $1 trillion at the moment to $4 trillion by 2050, whereas the funding alternative might soar from $2 trillion to $9 trillion (GIC, 2025).

These figures spotlight an investable frontier for the non-public sector. It’s a house the place influence enterprise capital can play a catalytic function in accelerating applied sciences that may save lives, shield property, and create financial worth.

The Energy of Adaptation & Resilience Applied sciences

Cisco Basis is answering this name by way of its Regenerative Future Fund and grants to nonprofits. The Basis strategically invests in progressive applied sciences designed to assist communities adapt, reply to, and mitigate the impacts of maximum climate occasions.

The Regenerative Future Fund’s method combines affected person, catalytic capital with blended finance fashions, creating an enabling surroundings for firms to scale transformative adaptation options, even when instant monetary returns are unsure.

Preserve studying to be taught extra about 5 startups and organizations the Basis is supporting and the way they’re serving to communities adapt and construct resilience.

Responding to Rainstorms and Hurricanes: Actual-Time Flood Monitoring with Hohonu

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season was one of many costliest on file, inflicting roughly $200 billion in damages, with 20 named storms battering the US and leading to widespread harm (New York Submit/ Fox Climate). Actual-time water knowledge on the neighborhood degree is essential for life-saving decision-making. With hurricanes intensifying and transferring extra unpredictably, the distinction of some inches in water degree can decide whether or not a neighborhood floods.

For instance, many communities affected by storms like Hurricane Helene in 2024 lacked well timed and localized water degree knowledge, resulting in insufficient early-warnings, delayed responses, and elevated harm.

Hohonu, which gives sensible monitoring instruments, fills this hole by delivering community-level visibility into altering water situations. Their inexpensive flood-monitoring sensors ship real-time, hyperlocal water degree knowledge to susceptible coastal and inland communities, enabling swifter, extra knowledgeable choices round evacuations, infrastructure safety, and emergency response. The power to trace water ranges on a block-by-block degree can scale back emergency response occasions by as much as 30% and has been proven to extend the efficacy of flood preparedness efforts by greater than 40%.

With help from the Cisco Basis Regenerative Future Fund, Hohonu is scaling quickly and dealing with each authorities and business entities to convey real-time water monitoring to each group that wants it. As Kevin Mukai, Hohonu’s COO, famous, “With Cisco Basis’s aim of constructing resilient and empowered communities – to not point out Cisco’s strengths in networking, IoT, and digital transformation – the match couldn’t be higher.”

As of 2025, Hohonu has deployed greater than 160 monitoring stations throughout 16 states, producing thousands and thousands of hours of publicly obtainable water degree knowledge. This open-access method reinforces the significance of transparency and public engagement in resilient infrastructure and clever monitoring options. By serving to communities construct their very own consciousness and response capabilities, Hohonu’s platform strengthens native autonomy and preparedness within the face of rising climate and environmental dangers. Study extra how Hohonu helps Lee County keep forward of flooding on this video:

Predictive AI Analytics for Wildfire Administration: Vibrant Planet

In 2023 and 2024, the US skilled a few of its most damaging wildfire seasons in current reminiscence. Based on the Nationwide Interagency Fireplace Heart, wildfires burned over 8.5 million acres nationwide in 2024 alone. In California, Los Angeles County noticed a number of wildfires exacerbated by dry situations and gasoline buildup. These fires displaced 1000’s of residents and brought about tens of billions in insured losses — a lot of which could have been mitigated with a $9 million funding in fuels reductions alongside the wild-urban interface, based on put up fireplace evaluation on the Eaton Fireplace carried out by Vibrant Planet.

A screenshot of Vibrant Planet's platform
Vibrant Planet’s platform combines these splendid eventualities throughout collaborators, and builds a prioritized, quantifiable wildfire danger discount plan that may be carried out within the area.

That is precisely the place Vibrant Planet’s platform is available in. It’s a first-of-its-kind resolution help system that permits fireplace districts, states, counties, federal businesses and utilities to grasp present danger and ecological well being, pinpoint priorities for danger mitigation therapies, then simulate the consequences of various therapies (similar to defensible house, hazardous fuels discount, forest thinning or prescribed burns) and, over time, quantify ecological and financial advantages. The platform additionally helps cross-jurisdictional coordination of plans and spending for implementation. In Placer County, California, which has the best variety of buildings vulnerable to wildfire in California, native authorities used Vibrant Planet to prioritize and plan 20,000 acres of wildfire danger discount therapies throughout forested communities. The end result was a cohesive, community-supported roadmap that not solely lowered fireplace danger but additionally improved water safety, biodiversity, and carbon storage, accepted inside 14 weeks, in comparison with typical multi-year planning processes. Vibrant Planet is now contracted as an annual subscription throughout 73 million acres in eight western states, together with about 30 million acres in California alone.

Vibrant Planet’s expertise reduces the time it takes to develop and approve forest administration plans from years to weeks and reduces battle in advanced socioecological environments. The platform gives forecasted outcomes of various sorts and intensities of remedy, and fashions their results on wildfire chance and depth, which helps managers weigh and talk tradeoffs of various plans to drive public help and funding for implementation. Via quite a few partnerships, Vibrant Planet gives a complete wildfire resilience resolution — from house-level defensible house to wildland-urban interface hazardous fuels reductions, to watershed-scale ecosystem restoration.

Cisco Basis’s funding has supported the growth of those capabilities, enabling broader adoption of Vibrant Planet and accelerating the event of recent options, together with slope stabilization planning and ecosystem restoration help. As fireplace danger will increase, platforms like Vibrant Planet might be important for constructing long-term resilience and defending individuals, infrastructure, and nature.

Autonomous Wildfire Suppression: Rain

Via Azolla Ventures — an impact-first investor supporting early-stage expertise firms that may obtain large-scale influence—Cisco Basis not directly helps Rain, a startup reworking wildfire response by way of autonomous plane. Constructing on the confirmed Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter and MATRIX autonomy platform,

Rain’s AI firefighting pilot permits plane to autonomously understand, perceive, goal, and suppress rising wildfires, decreasing response occasions and bettering security for human responders. This mix of synthetic intelligence (AI) and autonomous robotics represents a cutting-edge method to fireplace mitigation/administration, providing communities a speedy, dependable device to fight wildfires successfully.

The autonomous expertise behind helicopters outfitted with Rain is essential in tackling fires throughout hazardous situations, similar to nighttime or in rugged terrain, when conventional firefighting efforts face vital boundaries. This superior functionality can save useful response time and shield firefighters by decreasing their publicity to excessive dangers.

A helicopter collecting water in a desert landscape.A helicopter collecting water in a desert landscape.
A Black Hawk® helicopter outfitted with Rain wildfire mission autonomy and Sikorsky MATRIX™ flight autonomy picks up water from a Wildfire Water Options dip tank throughout an indication in Calif., April 24.

Superior Forest Administration: Earth Pressure

Earth Pressure is advancing forest administration by way of remote-controlled equipment and real-time digital monitoring. By modernizing vegetation administration, Earth Pressure permits safer and extra environment friendly wildfire prevention at scale. This expertise not solely mitigates wildfire dangers but additionally enhances native financial resilience by creating safer, technology-driven forestry jobs.

Earth Pressure’s remote-controlled tools permits for safer and extra exact forest clearing, considerably decreasing the hazard to staff in wildfire-prone areas. This modernization addresses labor shortages in forest administration and positions communities to proactively handle wildfire danger extra successfully.

Cisco Basis Regenerative Future Fund helps Earth Pressure by way of an funding in Third Sphere, an early-stage fund backing AI-native founders reworking world methods by way of climate-aligned applied sciences.

Empowering Communities to Construct Resiliency: Open Future Coalition

Open Future Coalition (OFC) works alongside communities to design adaptable workflows, construct capability, and foster ecosystems of observe throughout sectors like regenerative agriculture, watershed restoration, and Indigenous land stewardship.This work has been particularly impactful in Western North Carolina, the place OFC is partnering with North Carolina A&T State College and Warren Wilson School to help flood response efforts, citizen participation in scientific analysis, and regional biocultural mapping as a part of broader post-disaster restoration and resilience methods.

The Regional Resilience Fellowship program—launched with grant help from the Cisco Basis—performed a key function in shaping these instruments by way of real-world use throughout 35+ undertaking websites, laying the groundwork for a “residing library” of community-published assets, templates, and curricula from tasks throughout the OFC community. By strengthening a standard infrastructure for native motion, OFC helps communities from Appalachia to the Amazon scale their influence and mobilize the assets they should construct resilient communities.

Constructing a Extra Resilient Future

Cisco Basis’s Regenerative Future Fund and resiliency-related grants are integral elements of the corporate’s broader environmental sustainability technique, the Plan for Doable, in addition to our long-standing catastrophe response efforts. This begins with worker fundraising campaigns and grants to nonprofits that help communities within the instant aftermath of a catastrophe. It extends to Cisco Disaster Response deployments that use our expertise to help first responders, and to longer-term resilience and restoration efforts with our expertise, our individuals, and our assets.

Study extra about how the Cisco Basis helps resiliency on cisco.com

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