As climate change continues to leave its stamp on the planet, natural disasters have become increasingly common. Thankfully, there are plenty of startups striving to both reduce both the frequency and impact of these natural disasters. From satellite-based wildfire detection to AI damage analysis, here are the top startups tackling natural disasters.
Disclaimer: With so many exciting startups launching and growing worldwide, we aren’t able to cover them all. Furthermore, the startups that are listed below are not officially ranked and are listed in no particular order.
Companies Fighting Natural Disasters
1. Disaster Tech
- Location: Alexandria, Virginia
- Founder(s): Roger Coleman, Sean Griffin
- Founded In: 2019
- Funding: Late Stage VC, $9.1 Million
- Investors Include: Resilient Infrastructure + Secure Energy (RISE)
Disaster Tech specializes in developing data-driven software solutions for emergency management and disaster response. The company’s flagship product, the Decision science Integrated Collaboration Environment (DICE) , integrates various data sources like real-time weather information, infrastructure data, and historical disaster records to provide actionable insights for emergency managers. The platform utilizes advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to help predict potential impacts of disasters, optimize resource allocation, and improve overall disaster response strategies.
2. One Concern
- Location: Silicon Valley (Menlo Park, California)
- Founder(s): Ahmad Wani, Nicole Hu, Timothy Frank
- Founded In: 2015
- Funding: Series B, $152 Million
- Investors Include: Sozo Ventures, Geodesic Capital, Plum Alley Ventures Company
One Concern is a Silicon Valley-based startup that harnesses the power of AI to revolutionize disaster preparedness and response. Founded in 2015, the company has developed a unique platform that combines machine learning (ML), advanced analytics, and natural hazard modeling to create digital twins of cities and critical infrastructure.
These digital replicas allow One Concern to simulate various disaster scenarios — from earthquakes to floods — in order to provide valuable insights about potential vulnerabilities and cascading effects.
3. ZestyAI
- Location: San Francisco, California
- Founder(s): Attila Toth, Kumar Dhuvur
- Founded In: 2015
- Funding: Series B, $46 Million
- Investors Include: Plug and Play Tech Center, Brex, Centana Growth Partners
ZestyAI stands out in the insurtech space by leveraging AI to revolutionize property risk assessment. The company specializes in analyzing aerial imagery, property data, and environmental factors to provide granular insights into climate-related risks — particularly wildfires and floods.
This startup’s AI models can evaluate individual properties at scale, offering insurers and property owners a more accurate and dynamic understanding of risk than traditional methods. ZestyAI’s technology not only aids in underwriting and pricing insurance policies, but also helps homeowners and communities take proactive steps to mitigate potential hazards.
4. Pano
- Location: San Francisco, California
- Founder(s): Sonia Kastner, Arvind Satyam
- Founded In: 2019
- Funding: Series A, $45 Million
- Investors Include: Valor Equity Partners, Initialized Capital, Congruent Ventures
Pano is tackling wildfire detection with cutting-edge technology. The company’s approach involves deploying networks of AI-powered cameras in high-risk areas to spot fires in their earliest stages. These smart cameras continuously scan the landscape, using computer vision algorithms to distinguish smoke plumes from clouds or fog. When a potential fire is detected, the system immediately alerts authorities and provides them with real-time visual data and precise location information. This early warning system can significantly reduce response times, potentially saving lives and minimizing property damage in wildfire-prone regions.
5. FloodMapp
- Location: Brisbane, Australia
- Founder(s): Juliette Murphy, Ryan Prosser
- Founded In: 2019
- Funding: Series A, $9.89 Million
- Investors Include: Union Square Ventures, Climate Capital, Climate X
FloodMapp is an Australian startup that addresses the pervasive challenge of flood prediction and management. The company has developed a unique real-time flood forecasting and inundation mapping platform. By combining hydrological modeling, weather data, and ML, FloodMapp can predict flood events with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The company’s technology goes beyond simple water level forecasts, offering detailed, street-level inundation maps that show exactly which areas are likely to flood.
6. OroraTech
- Location: Munich, Germany
- Founder(s): Björn Stoffers, Florian Mauracher, Rupert Amann, Thomas Grübler
- Founded In: 2018
- Funding: Series A, $22.6 Million
- Investors Include: Edaphon, Ananda Impact Ventures, APEX Ventures
Detecting wildfires as early as possible is key when it comes to limiting the damage that they cause. Founded in 2018, OroraTech has developed and sent into space a collection of “nanosatellites” designed for the early detection and monitoring of forest fires. In addition to wildfire detection and mapping, OraTech satellites can also be utilized for severe weather forecasting.
7. Tractable
- Location: London, England
- Founder(s): Adrien Cohen, Alex Dalyac, Razvan Ranca
- Founded In: 2014
- Funding: Series E, $184.9 Million
- Investors Include: SoftBank Vision Fund, Insight Partners
Responding to natural disasters and finding ways to help after a natural disaster has happened is something that is typically much more feasible than preventing them, and assessing the amount of damage that a disaster has caused is an important part of this process. To help organizations such as insurance companies and government agencies assess the damage caused by natural disasters, Tractable offers AI technology that is able to accurately evaluate the monetary value of damages based on images such as satellite or drone photos.
8. Tesselo
- Location: Lisbon, Portugal
- Founder(s): Daniel Wiesmann, Marine Utgé-Royo, Michael Flaxman, Rémi Charpentier
- Founded In: 2017
- Funding: Seed, $486,000
- Investors Include: EDP Ventures, Repsol Foundation, European Commission
Combating climate change is one of the most important objectives when it comes to preventing natural disasters. To assist with this all-important goal, Tesselo provides AI analysis of satellite imagery in order to produce sustainability insights. Tesselo’s country-scale mapping solutions are able to produce key data points such as forest growth forecasts, crop harvest forecasts, pest prevalence, natural disaster risk analysis, and much more.
9. Drone Hopper
- Location: Madrid, Spain
- Founder(s): Pablo Flores
- Founded In: 2015
- Funding: Grant, $4.05 Million
- Investors Include: European Commission
Dropping water from the sky remains one of the most effective ways to fight wildfires. However, it’s also a costly, inefficient, and often dangerous process. To help solve each of these challenges, Drone Hopper has developed an aerial drone that is capable of delivering a payload of up to 600 liters of water. In addition to being capable of carrying such a large payload, other qualities that make these heavy-duty drones an ideal solution for fighting wildfires include its state-of-the-art stability system that keeps them stable in high winds and their patented water mist jet creation technology that ensures all of the water is delivered exactly where it needs to be.
10. Dryad
- Location: Eberswalde, Germany
- Founder(s): Carsten Brinkschulte, Marco Bönig, Ben Banerjee
- Founded In: 2019
- Funding: Series A, $12.8 Million
- Investors Include: TIME Ventures, Toba CApital, eCapital Entrepreneurial Partners
Dryad is focused on early wildfire detection and prevention in forests. They develop solar-powered sensors that can be attached to trees to monitor environmental conditions and detect signs of fire at its earliest stages. Dryad’s system uses a mesh network to transmit alerts to forest managers and firefighters, enabling rapid response to potential fire outbreaks. The company aims to help protect forests, reduce carbon emissions from wildfires, and mitigate the economic and ecological damage caused by large-scale forest fires.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the different types of natural disasters?
Natural disasters can take several different forms, including floods, droughts, hurricanes, typhoons, landslides, earthquakes, tornadoes, and wildfires. While these natural disasters can often be caused by human actions, they are separated from manmade disasters that are the direct result of human actions such as chemical spills and radiological accidents.
Are natural disasters on the rise?
The World Meteorological Organization reports that weather-related natural disasters have increased in frequency by five-fold over the past 50 years. While it is worth mentioning that improved reporting is cited as one reason for this increase, climate change and an increase in extreme weather conditions are also listed as reasons why natural disasters have been on the rise.
What are the ways to help after a natural disaster?
Natural disasters have always been one of the threats that mankind faces, and they probably won’t ever be eliminated entirely. However, climate change combined with a growing population that makes it more likely for a disaster to impact a larger number of people has made this threat more prominent than ever before.
In addition to slowing down climate change through an increased emphasis on sustainability, developing disaster preparedness policies and technologies is one of the best ways to limit the destruction that these disasters cause in the future.