Flood Mapping: $2T Climate Adaptation Market — Bessie Schwartz, CEO of Cloud to Street

Explore how Cloud to Street uses satellites, balloons, and big data to protect climate-vulnerable communities and unlock smarter flood insurance.

My guest today is Bessie Schwartz, the Co-founder & CEO of Cloud to Street.

Cloud to Street is the leading flood mapping platform designed to protect the world’s most climate-vulnerable communities.

By harnessing global satellites, advanced science, and community intelligence, they monitor worldwide floods in near real-time and remotely analyze local flood exposure at a click of a button.

Their mission is to ensure that all vulnerable governments finally access the high-quality information they need to prepare for and respond to increasing catastrophes.

In addition, she is…

• A Strategist - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
• An Echoing Green Climate Fellow
• Research partner - Data-Pop Alliance - a global coalition on Big Data and development created by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, MIT Media Lab, and the Overseas Development Institute

In this episode, we talked about the following:

• The relevance of her work to the recent flooding in Pakistan, leaving ⅓ of the country underwater
• How flooding is the #1 climate-related weather impact
• The history of their company 10 years ago in partnership with Google
• The difference between information and motivation to make the right decision
• Their business model of aligning incentives to help insurance companies underwrite more policies that accurately capture flood risk
• The need to invest in climate adaption – which BoA estimates to be a $2T market in a few years – and not just climate mitigation
• How they use 17 satellites, stratospheric balloon imaging, and drones to measure every square foot of the earth every day
• What parametric flood insurance is a breakthrough for climate risk management
• And lots more

Hope you enjoy!

And give Bessie and Cloud to Street a shoutout on LinkedIn or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people.

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