HazelFlood: AI-powered Urban Flood Risk Modelling for a Water-Stressed World
HazelFlood empowers cities to make smart water decisions, with precision, certainty, and speed.
Written by Hadley Arnold
Eligibility Criteria:
- Yes, I fulfill all the eligibility criteria
First Name
HadleyLast Name
ArnoldPhone Number
2133586547Gender
- Woman
What is the Name of Your Organization?
DiviningLAB LLCWhat is The Mission of Your Organization?
Our mission is to empower smart water decisions, fast. To that end, we: • develop and deliver the fastest, highest-performing decision-support tools for assessing, reporting, and managing water risk in a climate-resilient world; • provide a family of products tailored to the insurance/reinsurance, commercial real estate, resilience planning/finance, and smart cities/municipal markets; • offer excellent performance and dependable support at reasonable prices.What is The Month and Year of The Founding of Your Venture?
April 2016What is Your Organization's Website URL (optional)
divininglab.comWhat is The First and Last Name of Your Organization's Representative for The Challenge?
Hadley ArnoldWhat is Their Organizational Role/Title?
Co-founder, CEO, and Majority OwnerProject Stage: Select the Description Below That Best Applies to Your Organization
- Start-Up (first few activities have happened)
Please Select Your Organization's Focus Track (Select all That Apply)
- Built Environment
- Sustainable Economies
- Food, Water, & Waste
- Public Health & Safety
Please Select Which of The Following Types of Innovations Best Characterize Your Work (Select all That Apply)
- Product innovation (Introduction of a good or service or improvements made to existing products)
- Process innovation (execution of a new or considerably improved production or delivery method)
Please Upload Your Organizational Pitch Deck or Video
Please Note! Updated slide deck PDF has been uploaded at "Media Gallery" and shows up below as "Attachment." Website did not upload our PDF at the specified deck location.Help Us Support Diversity! Which of the following categories do you identify with (Optional)?
- White (for example: German, Irish, English, Italian, Polish, French)
Help Us Support Diversity! Do you identify as part of any of the following underrepresented communities (optional)?
- No, I do not identify with an underrepresented community
Please email proof of incorporation to Challenge Manager- Marc Carr (mcarr@ashoka.org) (for example, a certificate of incorporation, copy of your business license, etc.).
- Uploaded
We would like insight into the financial and operational health of your organization. Therefore, please send at least one of the financial documents below to Challenge Manager Marc Carr (mcarr@ashoka.org)
- Uploaded
Why is the problem that your organization is solving important to you and your co-founders/team?
Catastrophic urban flooding impacts 2.8 billion people worldwide; water insecurity in arid and semi-arid lands faces 1 billion people worldwide. We want to contribute to stable communities in a dynamic, uncertain climate. Trained as architects and urbanists, we spent the last 20+ years analyzing cities and the twin risks of a changing water cycle: urban flooding and water scarcity. With the right tools, we see insurance and reinsurance firms playing a leadership role in assessing, managing, and financing a resilient water future, stabilizing communities, businesses, and landscapes globally.Please provide 1-2 examples of your product/organization making an impact on a city.
Better modeling will result in right-sized policies: uninsured property owners will afford protection and high-risk properties will have appropriate coverage incl. well-defined trigger thresholds for supplemental (parametric) policies. Cities will be less vulnerable as policies specify/ incentivize best practices (nature-based green infrastructure solutions; managed retreat; etc). "Sustainable Insurance" will shape public policy (tax incentives, BMP credits) for buidling urban resilience.Fast forward 15-20 years. What does your organization look like? What is the impact that it's had on society?
We will build, grow and sustain a SaaS/B2B company that serves as recognized go-to provider of transformative water-resilience decision-support products. We will adapt and refine our tools to meet the changing needs of customers and climate while growing a company that is inspiring, fair, inclusive, operationally rigorous, impact-driven, and profitable to work for and work with. Our unparalleled ability to integrate design of the built environment with high-precision flood risk analysis will accelerate preparedness, recovery, and stability in communities and economies on every continent.What differentiates your organization? What makes it so that you can drive a bigger and better benefit to society than other organizations in this space?
As architects and urbanists, our deep understanding of design of the built environment and our tight focus on a huge social-environmental challenge--City Rain--differentiates our organization. The potential to drive huge societal benefits is as great as the challenge: City: More people live in urban centers now than ever in human history; Rain: more frequent rain events occur with unprecedented intensity. Our subject area expertise; business plan; mission, vision, and values; team; and technology all drive toward one goal: smart, fast adaptation in the face of a reallocated hydrologic cycle.What is the key barrier today to your organization unlocking the maximum amount of impact on society?
Funding is essential, of course. Beyond funding, strategic development partnerships—incl. customer expertise, data, and product + pricing input—are also critical for unlocking maximum potential. From interoperability with other risk analysis products and methods to enabling new markets and partnerships, close collaboration with (re)insurers will maximize effectiveness. What might be a key barrier? As the Economist pointed out (Run for Cover, July 20, 2019), reluctance, incrementalism or sluggishness to invest, innovate, and widely adopt fast, precise, data-driven tools could be a barrier.Written by
Team (2)
Peter Arnold
Role added on team:
"Peter Arnold, CTO, has led technical research and development in watershed resilience and climate adaptation for over 20 years. His water quality, remote sensing, and embedded energy research have been supported by major grants from HUD, EPA, water agencies, and private foundations. He has led and delivered complex multi-year projects in the public and private sectors. His work has been recognized by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Smithsonian Natl Design Museum, and AIA Latrobe Research Prize"
0 comments
Join the conversation:
Comment