From floods to fires: Investing in technologies that make communities more resilient

[ad_1] Excessive climate occasions have gotten extra frequent, intense, and expensive. In 2024 alone, international 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). Wanting 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 corporations listed on main international exchanges (Axios).

Nonetheless, there's additionally a large alternative on the horizon. In keeping with a 2025 report by FIC and Bain & Firm, international revenues from local weather adaptation options are anticipated to develop from $1 trillion at this time 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 personal sector. It's a area the place affect enterprise capital can play a catalytic position 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 via its Regenerative Future Fund and grants to nonprofits. The Basis strategically invests in revolutionary 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 atmosphere for corporations to scale transformative adaptation options, even when fast 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 Put up/ Fox Climate). Actual-time water information on the neighborhood degree is important 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 information, resulting in insufficient early-warnings, delayed responses, and elevated harm.

Hohonu, which offers sensible monitoring instruments, fills this hole by delivering community-level visibility into altering water circumstances. Their reasonably priced flood-monitoring sensors ship real-time, hyperlocal water degree information to weak coastal and inland communities, enabling swifter, extra knowledgeable selections 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 industrial entities to carry real-time water monitoring to each group that wants it. As Kevin Mukai, Hohonu’s COO, famous, “With Cisco Basis’s objective 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 information. 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. Be taught 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. In keeping with 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 circumstances and gas buildup. These fires displaced 1000's of residents and prompted 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, in keeping with put up fireplace evaluation on the Eaton Fireplace performed by Vibrant Planet.

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-472823" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/VibrantPlanetpic-1024x970.jpg" alt="A screenshot of Vibrant Planet's platform" width="500" height="473" srcset="https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/VibrantPlanetpic-300x284.jpg 300w, https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/VibrantPlanetpic-1024x970.jpg 1024w, https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/VibrantPlanetpic-768x727.jpg 768w, https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/VibrantPlanetpic-1536x1455.jpg 1536w, https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/VibrantPlanetpic.jpg 1640w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px"/> Vibrant Planet’s platform combines these preferrred situations throughout collaborators, and builds a prioritized, quantifiable wildfire danger discount plan that may be applied within the subject. 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 know present danger and ecological well being, pinpoint priorities for danger mitigation remedies, then simulate the consequences of various remedies (similar to defensible area, 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 constructions susceptible to wildfire in California, native authorities used Vibrant Planet to prioritize and plan 20,000 acres of wildfire danger discount remedies throughout forested communities. The consequence was a cohesive, community-supported roadmap that not solely decreased fireplace danger but additionally improved water safety, biodiversity, and carbon storage, accredited 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 know-how 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 offers forecasted outcomes of various varieties and intensities of therapy, 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. By way of quite a few partnerships, Vibrant Planet offers a complete wildfire resilience resolution — from house-level defensible area to wildland-urban interface hazardous fuels reductions, to watershed-scale ecosystem restoration.

Cisco Basis’s funding has supported the enlargement 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 can be important for constructing long-term resilience and defending folks, infrastructure, and nature.

Autonomous Wildfire Suppression: Rain By way of Azolla Ventures — an impact-first investor supporting early-stage know-how corporations that may obtain large-scale affect—Cisco Basis not directly helps Rain, a startup reworking wildfire response via autonomous plane. Constructing on the confirmed Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter and MATRIX autonomy platform,

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

The autonomous know-how behind helicopters geared up with Rain is essential in tackling fires throughout hazardous circumstances, similar to nighttime or in rugged terrain, when conventional firefighting efforts face important obstacles. This superior functionality can save precious response time and shield firefighters by lowering their publicity to excessive dangers.

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-472825 " src="https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/20250417-DSC09410-1024x683.jpg" alt="A helicopter collecting water in a desert landscape." width="837" height="558" srcset="https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/20250417-DSC09410-300x200.jpg 300w, https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/20250417-DSC09410-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/20250417-DSC09410-768x512.jpg 768w, https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/20250417-DSC09410-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://storage.googleapis.com/blogs-images-new/ciscoblogs/1/2025/05/20250417-DSC09410-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 837px) 100vw, 837px"/> A Black Hawk® helicopter geared up 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 via remote-controlled equipment and real-time digital monitoring. By modernizing vegetation administration, Earth Pressure allows safer and extra environment friendly wildfire prevention at scale. This know-how not solely mitigates wildfire dangers but additionally enhances native financial resilience by creating safer, technology-driven forestry jobs.

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

Cisco Basis Regenerative Future Fund helps Earth Pressure via an funding in Third Sphere, an early-stage fund backing AI-native founders reworking international techniques via 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 follow 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 Faculty 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 position in shaping these instruments via real-world use throughout 35+ challenge websites, laying the groundwork for a “residing library” of community-published sources, templates, and curricula from tasks throughout the OFC community. By strengthening a typical infrastructure for native motion, OFC helps communities from Appalachia to the Amazon scale their affect and mobilize the sources 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 fast aftermath of a catastrophe. It extends to Cisco Disaster Response deployments that use our know-how to help first responders, and to longer-term resilience and restoration efforts with our know-how, our folks, and our sources.