Congratulations to WE Empower 2020 awardees Bessie Schwarz and Beth Tellman on their life saving work! Cloud to Street co-founders Tellman and Schwarz recently released the ‘largest observed dataset of floods’ to the public free of charge. This data was collected from high-resolution satellites sensing flood activity, in ‘near’ real-time, over a 15-year span. Their goal? To enable, “[…] access to nearly a thousand flood events to train models, answer questions, and evaluate (their) community’s risks.”
With the benefits of improved data accuracy and increased depth comes surprises — substantially higher populations are impacted by flooding and are ‘growing ten times faster’ than previously anticipated. However, improved insights also enable the ability to plan for and monitor flood risk, imperative for policy makers, insurers, and disaster managers — and timely government relief efforts. The team, composed of over 50% women, is currently working on their first product, a parametric flood protection insurance with a focus on the world’s most vulnerable communities.