Vibrant Planet uses AI to map land and improve climate resilience

Image credits: Bob Van den Bergh Photography/Getty Images

As the Earth warms due to human-induced climate change, the damage caused by wildfires is also increasing. According to the National Integrated Drought Information System, the area of ​​forest burned by wildfires increased by 320% from 1996 to 2021.

While it would be ideal to build technologies to slow the progression and effects of climate change, this is a hugely expensive problem that affects every industry and requires adaptive solutions in the shorter term. Vibrant Planet is one such solution. The startup digitizes land maps and uses AI to help users (fire departments and government agencies) better manage land and better prepare for potential climate change events such as wildfires.

Allison Wolff, founder and CEO of Vibrant Planet, recently spoke on TechCrunch’s Found podcast about how good land management is necessary for food security, human safety, and protecting biodiversity and natural resources. Despite this, the industry is still largely bound to paper maps, he said. Always accurate. This analog approach makes it very difficult to implement and plan for specific climate disasters and events.

Wolff said Vibrant Planet, sold as an annual subscription, will bring everything online and use AI to make it easier and faster for users to see how potential disasters and events will unfold. said to solve this problem.

“We basically integrated this very powerful cloud-based data-driven system and were able to do it in real time,” Wolff said. “[It’s] Very cooperative with spatially overlapping plans. ”

By moving mapping online, organizations can also collaborate on land management solutions that work for everyone. Indigenous tribes can share knowledge about how their ancestors managed their areas and lands, and conservationists can explain which species on the land need to be protected, and fire chiefs can can talk about fire hazards.

The system also allows these groups to test different treatments of the land, such as controlled fires and removal of specific trees and vegetation, to see how they affect the land’s resilience. so you can find the best plan for everyone involved.

Wolff told Found that he never thought he would become a startup founder, but the problem Vibrant Planet is solving is too big to ignore.

“Vibrant Planet is a science and technology platform that is creating what we call a common operating picture for wildfire resiliency and nature’s resilience,” Wolff said. “We kind of borrowed the term general operating situation from the military and the fire service. It may sound like that, but it means urgency. It means critical and coordinated It’s a decision. And we’re using it in the areas of natural resource management and building resilience to wildfires, because it’s so urgent that we have to.”