Excessive climate occasions have gotten extra frequent, intense, and dear. In 2024 alone, world 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 similar time, company publicity to local weather dangers is predicted to triple by mid-century, with over $1.14 trillion in market worth in danger for corporations listed on main world exchanges (Axios).
Nevertheless, there may be additionally a large alternative on the horizon. In line with a 2025 report by FIC and Bain & Firm, world revenues from local weather adaptation options are anticipated to develop from $1 trillion at present 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 function 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 by means of its Regenerative Future Fund and grants to nonprofits. The Basis strategically invests in modern applied sciences designed to assist communities adapt, reply to, and mitigate the impacts of maximum climate occasions.
The Regenerative Future Fund’s strategy combines affected person, catalytic capital with blended finance fashions, creating an enabling surroundings for corporations to scale transformative adaptation options, even when quick monetary returns are unsure.
Maintain studying to study 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 report, inflicting roughly $200 billion in damages, with 20 named storms battering america and leading to widespread injury (New York Publish/ Fox Climate). Actual-time water knowledge on the neighborhood stage is essential for life-saving decision-making. With hurricanes intensifying and shifting extra unpredictably, the distinction of some inches in water stage 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 stage knowledge, resulting in insufficient early-warnings, delayed responses, and elevated injury.
Hohonu, which supplies 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 stage knowledge 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 stage 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 assist from the Cisco Basis Regenerative Future Fund, Hohonu is scaling quickly and dealing with each authorities and business entities to deliver real-time water monitoring to each group that wants it. As Kevin Mukai, Hohonu’s COO, famous, “With Cisco Basis’s aim 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 tens of millions of hours of publicly obtainable water stage knowledge. This open-access strategy 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. Study 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, america skilled a few of its most harmful wildfire seasons in current reminiscence. In line 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 hundreds of residents and precipitated 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 response to submit fireplace evaluation on the Eaton Fireplace performed by Vibrant Planet.
That is precisely the place Vibrant Planet’s platform is available in. It’s a first-of-its-kind choice assist system that permits fireplace districts, states, counties, federal businesses and utilities to grasp present threat and ecological well being, pinpoint priorities for threat mitigation remedies, then simulate the consequences of various remedies (reminiscent of 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 buildings susceptible to wildfire in California, native authorities used Vibrant Planet to prioritize and plan 20,000 acres of wildfire threat discount remedies throughout forested communities. The outcome was a cohesive, community-supported roadmap that not solely decreased fireplace threat but additionally improved water safety, biodiversity, and carbon storage, permitted 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 expertise reduces the time it takes to develop and approve forest administration plans from years to weeks and reduces battle in complicated socioecological environments. The platform supplies forecasted outcomes of various sorts and intensities of remedy, and fashions their results on wildfire chance and depth, which helps managers weigh and talk tradeoffs of various plans to drive public assist and funding for implementation. By way of quite a few partnerships, Vibrant Planet supplies 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 assist. As fireplace threat 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 expertise corporations that may obtain large-scale affect—Cisco Basis not directly helps Rain, a startup remodeling wildfire response by means of 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 bettering security for human responders. This mix of synthetic intelligence (AI) and autonomous robotics represents a cutting-edge strategy to fireside mitigation/administration, providing communities a speedy, dependable instrument to fight wildfires successfully.
The autonomous expertise behind helicopters geared up with Rain is essential in tackling fires throughout hazardous circumstances, reminiscent of nighttime or in rugged terrain, when conventional firefighting efforts face vital obstacles. This superior functionality can save beneficial response time and shield firefighters by lowering their publicity to excessive dangers.
Superior Forest Administration: Earth Drive
Earth Drive is advancing forest administration by means of remote-controlled equipment and real-time digital monitoring. By modernizing vegetation administration, Earth Drive allows safer and extra environment friendly wildfire prevention at scale. This expertise not solely mitigates wildfire dangers but additionally enhances native financial resilience by creating safer, technology-driven forestry jobs.
Earth Drive’s remote-controlled gear permits for safer and extra exact forest clearing, considerably lowering the hazard to staff in wildfire-prone areas. This modernization addresses labor shortages in forest administration and positions communities to proactively deal with wildfire threat extra successfully.
Cisco Basis Regenerative Future Fund helps Earth Drive by means of an funding in Third Sphere, an early-stage fund backing AI-native founders remodeling world methods by means of 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 observe 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 assist 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 assist from the Cisco Basis—performed a key function in shaping these instruments by means of real-world use throughout 35+ venture websites, laying the groundwork for a “residing library” of community-published sources, templates, and curricula from initiatives 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 Potential, in addition to our long-standing catastrophe response efforts. This begins with worker fundraising campaigns and grants to nonprofits that assist communities within the quick aftermath of a catastrophe. It extends to Cisco Disaster Response deployments that use our expertise to assist first responders, and to longer-term resilience and restoration efforts with our expertise, our folks, and our sources.
Study extra about how the Cisco Basis helps resiliency on cisco.com
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