disaster-response
(7)
DigitalGlobe lost two satellites. Then it sold the world a closer look.
Before it became part of Maxar, DigitalGlobe turned orbital photography into a business worth billions. Its legacy, now carried forward by Vantor, shows why the real product was never just a picture.
Two Brothers-in-Law Turned a Birdhouse Into a 3.5-Billion-Image Property Machine
Eagleview began with one roofer trying to avoid a ladder. Eighteen years later, its planes, patents and property models sit inside decisions about claims, construction, taxes, solar panels and disaster response.
Juvare Built the Operating System for the Hour Everything Goes Sideways
When hospitals fill, storms land or a power grid falters, the first casualty is often a shared sense of reality. Juvare sells that shared picture - and a growing stack of tools for acting on it.
Near Space Labs
Near Space Labs is a Brooklyn-based earth-imaging company that flies small autonomous robots called Swift into the stratosphere on helium balloons to capture 7-centimeter-resolution imagery of the ground below. Founded in 2017, it delivers frequent, analysis-ready aerial data to property and casualty insurers, governments, utilities and environmental groups at a fraction of the cost of traditional planes or satellites, positioning balloon-borne imaging as a scalable, low-emission alternative for monitoring cities, infrastructure and disasters.
VANTIQ
VANTIQ is a Walnut Creek, California software company that builds a low-code platform for real-time, distributed, event-driven applications. The platform acts as a master orchestrator for agentic AI, generative AI, edge computing and IoT - letting enterprises sense events as they happen, reason over them with AI and multi-agent systems, and act in the moment for mission-critical outcomes across healthcare, defense, disaster response, manufacturing, energy and the public sector.
Safehub
Safehub turns any building into an IoT device for earthquake risk. Its proprietary sensors and cloud analytics deliver building-specific damage information within minutes of a seismic event, helping owners, insurers and emergency teams make faster, better decisions. The same sensor network powers a new generation of sensor-triggered parametric earthquake insurance designed to slash basis risk and speed up payouts.
Ana Visneski
Ana Visneski is a crisis communications expert, founder of Merewif LLC, former Coast Guard officer, and senior AWS leader who pioneered social media programs in the U.S. military, led disaster response during COVID-19 and major hurricanes, advised Wizards of the Coast through the 2023 OGL crisis, and now runs a boutique firm helping tech and gaming companies navigate chaos. She holds two simultaneous UW master's degrees, published a book called 'F*ck It, Watch This,' teaches crisis communications at the University of Washington, and describes herself as someone who says 'That looks impossible, I want to try it.'