Making sense of a changing climate
Climasens is using climate intelligence to help decision-makers and organisations understand and develop resilience to climate change.
Climasens is one of six teams selected for the inaugural Humanitech Lab Innovation Program, where it’s being supported by funding and mentorship to scale up its innovative climate change risk assessment and resilience platform. Climasens Co-founder and CEO, Joseph Glesta, explains the team’s latest initiatives and global ambitions.
Humanitech: What is Climasens?
Joseph Glesta: Climasens originally started as SensCity, a real-time monitoring platform developed through research back in 2017 that focused on connecting resilient infrastructure across cities to understand how adaptation is happening in real time. By resilient infrastructure, — I mean green infrastructure, green roofs, green walls and stormwater infrastructure — so we can understand when an event like a heatwave or a flood is happening, and the impact it is having on the surrounding environment.
“Our intention was to give customers the tools to literally measure and manage climate change,” Joseph Glesta, Co-Founder and CEO, Climasens.
We ask ourselves: how does this area react and adapt? Is it able to withstand the event and provide benefit? or is it doing poorly and actually creating a worse impact from these types of events? And, as we know, these events are only going to get worse… right?
We realised we also needed to think about the step before our stakeholders get investment in the first place to procure, develop, build and plant resilient infrastructure, which relies on gathering the data to identify the business case needs. That was how we started to move into climate risk — our intention was to give customers the tools to literally measure and manage climate change. A lot of people say it, -but we are actually trying to provide that,- by building an evidence base from historical records, providing a way to monitor in real time through IoT [Internet of Things] and then identify current and future risk through scenarios.
Climasens has emerged as a way to identify climate risk so that investments can be made, opportunities assessed and risks identified to better improve our cities and decision-making in regards to investing or divesting in the right type of infrastructure for our future. We’ll be developing this platform that will have global climate risk mapping and identification of infrastructure assets for people, places, buildings, roads, power plants, and all other critical infrastructure to understand how we can better support decision-making and improve the way in which our future will, unfortunately, get a little bit worse. We want to give people the incentive and ideas on how to better withstand these impacts. That’s our true aim.
What might working with Climasens entail?
Within the validation period, we’re looking at two ways we could potentially navigate a use case. One is through AEC (architecture, engineering and construction), — companies like Arcadis, who are strategically building our cities and designing our infrastructure. We can work with them to identify risks within infrastructure planning.
The second way is through NGOs like Red Cross, where we are gathering the data requirements and customer needs to identify how our risk platform can better support their work — such as identifying the vulnerability of populations around the world to certain hazards to ensure they will be protected from natural disasters and climate impacts.
“We’ve seen NSW as of November say that there will be no new dark roofs in Western Sydney. They’ve identified heat to be such an issue that we’re now changing the way in which we plan, design and build our future cities. ….Why stop at Western Sydney? Why not go all of Sydney? Why not go all of Queensland? Why not go all of Melbourne? Shouldn’t we be doing this globally?” Joseph Glesta, Co-founder and CEO, Climasens.
I’ve given you a broad array, but in terms of a more targeted approach, we’d like to get validation through a customer directly. The use case would be identifying the types of assets or places they need monitored and evaluated to understand what kind of technology we need to bring in order to give them something they can use when they’re planning, building and designing future cities.
Simply put, we just want a customer to say: “Here’s what we need identified from a risk standpoint, here’s what we need monitoring into the future and here’s the type of data and the format we think you should provide us with.” We’ll then go into this discovery with them, validate it through a number of different streams and channels within their internal organisation and then have the product in development in parallel to ensure that when these conversations manifest towards that validation period, we can start to show and tell, then take them along the journey so that we can move to pilot.
You’ve got the ability to capture data yourselves, process open-source data, and then use the data a user may provide you with. Interesting! What are some of the initiatives you see yourselves implementing in city infrastructure? Are you looking at a lot of heat?
Yeah, heat and flooding is big to us — and we’re probably going to focus predominantly on heat. Heat is a really important aspect that hasn’t really been identified within these types of risk assessments. People kind of fly over them and say, “heat is an issue!” But what are they doing about it?
We’ve seen NSW as of November say that there will be no new dark roofs in Western Sydney. They’ve identified heat to be such an issue that we’re now changing the way in which we plan, design and build our future cities. So how can we help these decision-makers get the data and information in digestible ways so they can keep [this] going? Why stop at Western Sydney? Why not go all of Sydney? Why not go all of Queensland? Why not go all of Melbourne? Shouldn’t we be doing this globally?
“We still haven’t figured out what the numbers are that mean we’re okay. We keep using CO2 as our North Star, South Star — whatever you want to call it, but at the end of the day, it’s as simple as this: carbon in, carbon out. The complicated stuff is understanding how much resilience we can provide in a climate-impacted event. How do we mitigate or lessen disaster damage? How do we improve people’s lives? Those metrics haven’t been developed and I think that’s what we can do globally.”
We’ve got to think small to create these little movements that equate to much larger impacts around the world. That is the aim. If we can get something off the ground that shows people that the information we’re providing is useful and can be used in decision-making, then it aids in creating better places.
You’re already touching on this question, but what is the biggest dream for Climasens? What would you like to become?
Ideally, we will be a global climate risk platform that allows organisations to identify future risks to them — be it heat, flooding or population vulnerability — and then have the tools to measure the type of adaptations they’re bringing in. Like you said before, we can ingest data in a number of ways, we can provide open data, and we have our own set for evaluation. But the next era is not going to be carbon: it’s going to be adaptation.
We still haven’t figured out what the numbers are that mean we’re okay. We keep using CO2 as our North Star, South Star, whatever you want to call it, but at the end of the day, it’s as simple as this — carbon in, carbon out. The complicated stuff is understanding how much resilience we can provide in a climate-impacted event. How do we mitigate or lessen disaster damage? How do we improve people’s lives? Those metrics haven’t been developed, and I think that’s what we can do globally.
So that’s where you really want to exist — in that space of helping define that risk?
If we can benchmark the resilience of an area and give people scores to identify what needs improving, target where these areas are going to be hit hardest and provide ways for them to monitor the adaptation efforts they’re putting in to show that their investments are proving successful or unsuccessful, then that will be the most effective way for us to improve our lives in the near and long term.
We are getting a bigger picture now of how that’s going to work. It’s not just governments who are going to have to really demonstrate what they’re doing to mitigate the risks that are coming — Climasens is existing at this threshold of realising exactly what is upon us. Do you find that admitting how impactful climate change is going to be on our population difficult in a business sense?
I mean, we know it’s not going to be good. We know it’s going be a three-degree world, and that’s the sad truth. But how do we live with it? Given the foresight of knowing how bad it’s going to get, how do we make incremental changes now to improve people’s lives down the track?
People have ignored this for a long time. We’ve basically just been eating a poor diet, not exercising and treating our planet like a dump — we knew we were going to eventually get sick. And now’s the time when we’re like: “Okay, preventative measures!” That’s kind of where we’re coming along with EKG for humans and EKG for the planet!
EKG — like a heart monitor for the planet! It’s a good metaphor for mitigating that threshold, because it’s something we all struggle with at the moment — how to talk about the realities of climate change. There is still a lot of talk about mitigating 1.5 degrees, especially with the different narratives that exist at a political level in our country. What are some of the biggest challenges you’re facing in actually getting these tools up and running at a local and then global level?
At a local level, we just need someone to validate this. In Australia, it’s a harder sell on a national scale, but on a local level there are government local councils who want to do this — who hire researchers, who then hire consultancies who then hire big-tier firms to do these audits. And then, wham, bam, thank you, ma’am — we’re left with a report that sits on the shelf.
We want to build capacity within internal organisations, then give them the tools to continue to do this [work]. The biggest roadblocks for us are getting into organisations and convincing them to work with a start-up. This isn’t simple stuff where you go to a university in Melbourne or Queensland and say, “Great, validated!” because it’s a research organisation with researchers behind it. Instead, this is a start-up in a very difficult space where the majority of start-ups playing climate risk are funded in the tens of millions. They’ve got research teams; they’ve got massive power processing.
Our advantage is that we come from a research background with the research teams, and we’re starting to pull some of these researchers into our start-up, and we’re just doing this leaner. So, it’s being able to get in the door and have those conversations. Whether it’s with a consultancy or whether it’s a local council, they need to argue for these changes as well. But the winds of change are coming, so if we provide them with a tool that can do this, they’ll be able to use it in a much more proactive way than even last year.
Do you see this as being a dashboard for people to understand what’s going on right now, and then also an archive that allows us to see what has happened and what is coming? So, those three insights — past, present and future — are really playing a part in the way that people manage risk when it culminates with weather patterns, allowing us to get a lot better at forecasting what’s coming?
The archive aspect is a very interesting one. One of our potential customers the other day said, “In the future, any sort of climate risk audit that happens in say 2030 or 2050, is going to be asking, “Where’s your data from?” We’re not thinking about that now, but if you’re giving people a way to demonstrate how they’re collecting their data, that’s going to actually impact their bottom line from an insurance standpoint and from a banks-giving-them-loans standpoint. The quality of data is going to be very important.
So you’re right — past, present and future all culminate as archival ways of showing how you did your audits, which is going to be crucial. And by now we’re all very comfortable with a dashboard! By giving them something easy to use, digest, translate and contextualise, we’re hopefully going to be able to provide all the evidence they need to make the right decisions for the future.
From a Humanitech Innovation Lab perspective, what are you hoping to get from this experience?
For us, it’s connecting to a much broader genre. It’s health. It’s humans. It’s the vulnerabilities experienced by the populations Australian Red Cross often deals with that we think we can support best. It’s about being brought into an organisation in many ways, but also partnering with an organisation that has similar goals to us. Also, assessing how and why they’re doing things gives us a better understanding of how to plan and design our platform. So that’s a bit of a wraparound way of saying that they’re a great organisation to partner with because they’ve been doing this for decades, and we can hopefully tap into some of the knowledge and great minds that have brought it this far!
What are some of the insights Climasens has relied on to enable organisations, governments and decision-makers to better prepare their environments to be more resilient? What does that more resilient world look like in 10 years with the help of Climasens?
That is a strong question. We would have identified multiple risks and created ways in which these decision-makers implemented resilient interventions. We then would have monitored these interventions and ultimately enabled ways for us to create a database of what’s effective and what’s not. So by identifying risk and collecting enough data, we’re automatically giving decision-makers a way to say, “If it’s going to be this risky and we apply this intervention, it’s going to reduce this impact by x-amount.” We’re automating the process of resilience in many ways. And, if we’re able to do that, then we could do it on a wider scale than ever before; not just the people who are paying right now — the Fortune 500 companies , — but cities, big and small, to help protect people and places.
What is one of the biggest lessons you’ve learned so far in the journey?
The people you work with are extremely important. Ultimately, your network of founders and your community are very valuable in keeping you supported and keeping you going, but your co-founders and everyone who brings a different skill or experience to the plate is invaluable. Another lesson learned is to iterate! Just because you have something in your mind that you think is going to work, don’t go guns blazing in that one direction — test it! It’s important to validate, it’s important to talk with customers — especially considering they’re the ones paying for it. If you’re building something that no one’s going to pay for, it’s not going to work. That’s the biggest lesson.
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This article is part of a series detailing the innovations taking place to support technology start-ups that focus on social impact, supported by Humanitech’s Lab initiative. Learn more about other organisations pioneering the use of frontier technology for social good here.
