How technology companies are bringing innovative solutions to bear on the growing threat of wildfires and working with insurers and other stakeholders to mitigate this risk is the focus of “Igniting Change in Wildfire Risk Management,” a new episode of the Predict & Prevent® podcast from The Institutes.

Host Pete Miller, CEO of The Institutes, welcomes Bill Clerico, founder of Convective Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in early-stage firetech startups.

Clerico discusses how these companies and entrepreneurs are making a difference in improving community resilience, mitigating risk and enabling a safer and faster response to fires.

Bill Clerico of Convective Capital

“We think about landscapes, we think about communities, and we think about response. And then, you know, there’s a myriad of ways that technology can help impact that,” he said. “It can be satellites or drones or AI or software or fintech or insurance. There’s lots of ways to think about, lots of tools that could be applied to those three big problems.”

Clerico shares his personal experience with wildfires near his home in Northern California and how it led him to start Convective Capital.

He also provides examples of companies that are addressing the three big problem areas, such as BurnBot for resilient landscapes, Fire Aside for fire-adapted communities, and Pano for safer and more effective fire response.

Clerico also emphasizes the opportunity for greater collaboration among stakeholders, including utilities, insurers, and regulators, to address the challenges of wildfire prevention and mitigation. Convective created an annual event, Red Sky Summit, to bring together diverse stakeholders focused on wildfire technologies.

“There’s just so much interconnection between, you know, that transmission line that starts the fire, the government agencies that try to intervene, the community located nearby, the recovery effort. The problem itself is really intertwined,” Clerico said. “And so one of the things we try to do is bring that whole cross-disciplinary group together. And it’s been pretty amazing.”

Clerico offers some ideas on how insurers could drive a big ROI by funding pilots to capture data on how various technologies improve resilience and mitigate risk.

“I think insurers could really lean into this and say, OK, can we take a pot of money that’s not super material to the bottom line, but is enough to learn? And could we go give $10 million in credits to policyholders in high-risk areas to conduct mitigation and go do a bunch of the work,” he suggests. “Go do it and then collect a bunch of data, right? And see how it actually works. Even if there’s a small short-term cost, the discoveries in that $10 million trial could save billions of dollars over the next 20 years.”

To listen to this and other episodes, visit predictandprevent.org, or look for Predict & Prevent on most podcasting platforms. &