Startups  January 14, 2025

Innosphere forms partnership to address disaster challenges

By

FORT COLLINS — Innosphere and the Colorado-Wyoming Climate Resilience Engine have partnered with the Houston-based Resilience Innovation Hub’s Future Proofing America Collaborative to address the need for pre-disaster risk mitigation and building resilience through rapid deployment of novel technologies, equipment and data platforms.

Led by Innosphere Ventures and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engines program, the Colorado-Wyoming Engine is a collaborative initiative focused on driving innovation for community resilience across the region. It brings together a diverse network of partners to develop and commercialize technologies that address critical environmental challenges, foster economic growth and enhance community well-being.   

According to an Innosphere news release, “The western United States has experienced the severe consequences of persistent drought and wildfire cycles, causing multi-billion-dollar public and private-sector financial, economic and societal impacts. The increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters has led to rising insurance costs and significant rebuilding efforts, highlighting the urgent need for proactive measures to protect communities and infrastructure.”

The Future Proofing America Collaborative aims to develop innovative solutions and strategies for investing in resilient assets, facilities and infrastructure through enhanced risk mitigation standards. The Climate Resilience Engine’s complimentary focus on water-related challenges responds to urgent demands for alternative technical, scientific and engineered solutions for public and private water systems serving residential, industrial, and commercial sectors.

“The CO-WY Engine is increasingly focusing on the financial impact to communities from persistent disaster threats,” Innosphere CEO Mike Freeman said in a prepared statement. “Our collaboration with RFA is a natural extension of the Engine’s work.”

Richard Seline, executive director of the Future Proofing America Collaborative and the Resilience Innovation Hub, added that “aligning with Innosphere’s nationally recognized technology and innovation ecosystem as well as its role in leading the National Science Foundation’s Climate Resilience Engine accelerates our common objectives for Future Proofing America. The current inefficient response-recovery-rebuild from [an] ever-increasing number of billion-dollar weather events requires us to be in the forefront of a massive pivot in risk exposure.”

The Hub, Collaborative and ROAR Partners (Resilience, Opportunity, Advisors and Resources) are forming the Resilience Community Trust and the Resilience Endeavor Fund to leverage public, private and philanthropic resources, pivoting the nation’s risk profile for employers, industries, communities, neighborhoods and families through direct investment in retrofitting and new development of assets, facilities and infrastructure for the most-in-need, most-at-risk locations.

Key areas to be supported by the collaboration, especially for water generation, management, reuse and similar opportunities, include:

  • Addressing the fiscal and financial impacts of repetitive natural disasters.
  • Encouraging proactive investment to mitigate economic and societal costs.
  •  Incentivizing insurance, reinsurance, mortgage and public finance resources into a new resilience capital pool.
  • Achieving a 1:6 or better cost-benefit and return on investment through the deployment of technologies embedded on, in, or adjacent to residential, commercial, industrial and public-sector assets.
  • Building resilient communities and infrastructure with a focus on thriving rather than just surviving.

“We are honored to have the Climate Resilience Engine as a powerful source of innovation and investment, proving the value of resilience as a financial and economic force multiplier,” Anthony Kuczinski, former CEO of Munich Re US and senior adviser to the FPA Collaborative, said in a prepared statement. “By leveraging past lessons-learned with new pilot-demonstration projects, Innosphere and the Climate Resilience Engine align with our intent to unleash millions of alternative investment dollars and accelerate past the handwringing and analysis-paralysis that limits our national innovation capacity.”

Innosphere and the Colorado-Wyoming Climate Resilience Engine have partnered with the Resilience Innovation Hub's Future Proofing America Collaborative to address the need for pre-disaster risk mitigation.

Related Posts

Categories: Clean Tech Startups Today's News Colorado-Wyoming Climate Resilience Engine Innosphere
Sign up for BizWest Daily Alerts