Colliding in Climate City
Entrepreneurship and innovation meet in Asheville, N.C., a powerhouse of government, military, and academic climate experts
After World War II, at the start of the Cold War, the U.S. government decided that its paper weather records, stored in New Orleans, would be better off warehoused in a city with slightly less volatile and wet weather. Asheville, at the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway in western North Carolina, not only enjoyed a milder climate with fewer perilous forecasts but was also within a dayâs drive of the nationâs capital, andâunlike Washington, D.C.âwas not a Soviet target. Plus, the federal government had recently acquired a building there, one of the largest in the Southeast, which came with a trained workforce.
Nearly seven decades later, Ashevilleâa hippie mountain town better known for its Biltmore estate, craft breweries, and popular âShindig on the Greenâ summer music gatheringâremains home to the worldâs largest repository of climatological data.
Downtown Asheville is home to:
- The National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) headquarters, which falls under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA);
- The U.S. Air Forceâs 14th Weather Squadron, which provides climate services to the defense and intelligence communities;
- The North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies (NCICS), a center of excellence that operates the Cooperative Institute for Climate and SatellitesâNorth Carolina; and
- The University of North Carolina Ashevilleâs National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), which worked with NOAA to build the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit during the Obama administration.
But perhaps nothing has helped secure Ashevilleâs âClimate Cityâ nickname as much as an entrepreneurship and innovation center established in 2016 known as âThe Collider.â
Founded by local businessman and philanthropist Mack Pearsall, The Collider is a nonprofit organization dedicated to incubating startups that use data to work toward climate change solutions. Located in a sunny, 25,000-square-foot space across the street from the park that hosts Ashevilleâs famous drum circle, and just a few blocks from the federal building that houses NCEI, NCICS, and the 14th Squadron, The Collider provides space for co-working, collaboration, meetings, and presentations. Its 65 member companies include climate tech startups (some founded by retired NCEI climate experts), consultancies, nonprofits, and entrepreneurial support businesses.
âI do think thereâs something special about whatâs being built here that can serve the world by exporting climate change solutions,â said The Collider CEO Josh Dorfman.
Given Ashevilleâs remarkable concentration of climate scientists and researchers in government, academia, and business, Dorfman said he anticipates The Collider will be at the forefront of creating an industry. âIf you have the big brains and the big data, you can do important things in the world.â
In October, The Collider hosted its first climate data hackathon, and in March, it announced its first Climate Tech Challengeâa global search for the best emerging idea in climate tech, with a $5,000 cash prize. In April, The Collider hosted its second annual climate change conference, with speakers such as author and inventor Bill Nye, NERDette podcastâs Greta Johnsen, and venture capital fund In-Q-Telâs Tom Gillespie, among others.
This fall, the organization will launch a virtual, mentor-led incubator program open to climate analytics startups around the world. Among the focus areas: climate-smart agriculture, resilient infrastructure, and climate data and analytics. The Colliderâs goal is to work with more than 60 companies in its first five years.
While activating the science community to engage with the entrepreneurial community has been challenging at timesââThe personalities are different,â Dorfman saidâThe Collider has succeeded in becoming a rich space for networking. It is a place where academics, government scientists, and entrepreneurs who might not typically cross paths can literally collide to share ideas and brainstorm solutions.
For instance, the 14th Weather Squadronâwhich ingests nearly 3.8 million weather observations each day and supports hundreds of intelligence agencies, combatant commands, and coalition partnersâhas consulted with NEMAC+FernLeaf, a public-private partnership and The Colliderâs anchor tenant, to start modernizing its data capabilities.
âWe are in the early stages of transforming the way we deliver geospatial datasets to customers, including the Air Force or Intelligence Community,â said Raymond Kiess, a senior climate scientist with the 14th, who explained that currently, the squadron relies on sorely outdated desktop capabilities. âWe reached out to NEMAC+FernLeaf, our partners at The Collider, who have experience in geospatial data, and we asked them how to do it. Our desire is to be able to meet OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards for sharing GIS data over the web.â
The private side of the NEMAC+FernLeaf partnership, FernLeaf Interactive, has a proprietary software dubbed AccelAdapt that uses tax, climate, and socioeconomic data to help local governments assess climate risks, propose targeted actions, and communicate those plans to the public. The company is one of Esriâs emerging business partners and is also working on incorporating climate change resilience into the Esri Hub, a framework that focuses on citizen engagement.
âThe Hub helps get data into the hands of people who may not even know what GIS is,â said FernLeaf CEO Jeff Hicks. âWe want people to be able to type in their address, and itâll say, âHey, you live in an area that is susceptible to wildfires. Hereâs what you can do to be more resilient.ââ
Hicks, who founded FernLeaf out of his home, described The Collider as a âcenter of gravityâ for people working on climate change solutions. While the data is important, he said, itâs more important to be able to show up at happy hour and run into someone responsible for a particular dataset heâs using. âIâm not walking over to NCEI to pick up a hard drive,â he said. âItâs the people. Thereâs a brain trust here.â
NCEI, formerly the National Climatic Data Center, stores climate information dating back to 1743 on tens of millions of pieces of paper as well as in the cloud at a volume of nearly 40 petabytes. The center is responsible for issuing weather watches and warnings in addition to generating statistical information such as weather norms, averages, and anomalies. It also produces datasets for nearly every sector of the economy, but not for individual businesses. The challenge is getting that data into the hands of decision-makers and market drivers.
âThe Colliderâs the next step,â said meteorologist Scott Stevens at NCEIâs Center for Weather and Climate, adding that the decades-old collaboration between NCEI and the 14th set the stage for Asheville to be known for its climate data expertise. âWhat do we do with all this data?â
The Colliderâs COO, Megan Robinson, formerly of NCEI, said itâs beneficial for government employees to meet with those from the private sector and academia. âThe government sometimes has a hard time understanding what impact their data has on society, what formats are needed, how to improve their data streams,â she said. âBy convening at The Collider, those from the federal side are able to understand the intersections that they donât normally see in their day-to-day jobs.â
Collider member Innovim works primarily with the Department of Defense, NOAAâs National Weather Service, and NOAAâs National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. It provides sub-seasonal to seasonal weather and climate monitoring, as well as forecasting up to weeks or months in advance. The Maryland-based company has 14 computer scientists and systems engineers working out of Ashevilleâs federal building.
Philip Ardanuy, Innovimâs chief science officer, said The Collider offers staff a place to network, recruit new employees, and learn about other areas of the industry. More than anything, he said, itâs a community in which professors, civil servants, technicians, researchers, and academics can share information as equals.
âThe work we do is typically driven by our customersâ missions and the function we support, so it doesnât necessarily cover the entire enterprise of climate change,â Ardanuy said. âBy interacting across the diversity of The Collider, we can understand all aspects of how climate affects society. The conversations are diverse, and as a consequence, they broaden my perspective and help me see the big picture.â
Climate change as a national security threatâwith potential to wreak havoc on coastal and urban communities, agriculture, and food and water suppliesâhas been discussed at various Collider events. Ardanuy predicts The Colliderâs future role as perhaps helping to prepare a âclimate-ready nation,â not unlike NOAAâs Weather-Ready Nation program, for which Innovim is an ambassador. To that end, The Collider would help the public understand the causes and likely impacts of climate change, prepare for the worst, and mitigate when possible.
âRegardless of how climate is changing, and regardless of what portion is manmade, society will have to be agile enough to adapt to climate change asâand beforeâit happens,â Ardanuy said. âThe interactions that The Collider facilitates will promote the flow of information across different organizations that normally might not even know of each other. At the end of the day, it will help America be more climate resilient.â
Posted in: Features  Tagged in: 2019 Issue 2, Civil, Data, Defense & Military, Innovation, Weather
Education, Features, Scholarship Winners
2013 USGIF Scholarship Winners
Meet the 2013 USGIF Scholarship winners
Features
Airborne ISR
The wave of the future isnât just about collecting dataâitâs finding better ways to exploit it