Tech Startups Focusing on Sea Level Rise Adaptation
For a long time, coastal resilience was about building sea walls, elevating homes and renourishing beaches to protect people and property against storm surge. Then came satellites, the cloud and a new generation of tech entrepreneurs with bold ideas for tackling a new and urgent challenge: rapidly rising sea levels and increasingly destructive storms. By using data and technology, these trailblazers are helping us better understand risks and solutions — saving coastal communities money, resources and even lives.
Read the entire article at Medium – The Fourth Wave.
Why send people into the field to monitor the functions of storm-buffering wetlands if a “neural network” can process satellite images for less money and in a fraction of the time — on a user-friendly online dashboard? Why gamble with development in flood-prone coastal cities when there’s now a startup that can predict such risks from one block to the next, showing where it’ll flood in the next few hours or decades?
Source: Environmental Defense Fund
What we’re getting is a new level of prediction and precision that will help people, industry, and governments make smarter decisions going forward. This new crop of entrepreneurs is lowering barriers to scientific data and technology, helping their customers monitor the effectiveness of coastal adaptation projects and to minimize risks.
Here are some up-and-coming tech startups and innovative projects in the coastal resilience space:
California-based Upstream Tech uses satellite data and machine learning to show if a conservation project is delivering results. Environmental Defense Fund is exploring whether this tool can be used to validate the performance of wetland restoration in Louisiana, work that is now done by people in the field.
Jupiter Intel’s models, satellite data and sensors help community planners, developers and city officials anticipate challenges such as sea level rise, erosion and impermeable pavement. The company can predict flood risks down to specific properties, for the near future and years out.
Coastal Risk Consulting is now providing Florida property owners with actionable intelligence about flood risks. The company predicts tidal flooding, storm surge and heavy rainfall events now and 30 years out, and offers guidance on how to protect properties.
