Thomas Grübler | Co-Founder & CSO
Interview given to Ms Maria Louisa Vafiadaki
-What were the problems you identified that led you to found OroraTech and what is your main mission ?
Our mission is to control the uncontrollable; that is fire. We need to mitigate climate change and do everything to fight against it, protecting our forests and detecting illegal emissions while building climate resilience at the same time.
Fires are universal. To combat climate change every day, we need to have new, reliable technologies and a strong infrastructure. Given that our cities are growing and more houses are being built near forests, this increases the risk of fires in today’s world. Our technology helps those fighting fires on the ground, giving them thermal intelligence solutions to combat these problems as effectively as possible.
-Please explain your intelligence solutions and tell us about the innovative satellite technology being employed.
Our core product is the Wildfire Solution. There are several different applications of the data that are generated from our technologies. For example, some customers own plots of forested land in which they produce paper. With our solution, they have constant oversight of the terrain and are alerted about any fire activity, allowing them to quickly take action. If there are several fires, they can easily prioritize which areas are most important to evacuate or control first. This is especially important in countries with large land reserves like the United States and Canada, where many fires can occur in one area at the same time.
With regards to our technology, our innovative solutions allow us to spot and process thermal data much faster than any other service. Not only do our infrared cameras spot fires, but the systems on board the satellite use AI processing and edge computing to analyze the data before it’s beamed back to Earth. What that means is we can detect the fire the moment a thermal sensor flies over, instantly sending the information to our system and our customers. We receive analyzed data quickly - within minutes - because we process it on the orbital platform. It is real -time data.
This gives our customers an advantage as well because we don’t have to provide any equipment,; it’s just software.
-Who are you mostly targeting with your services and who would you say benefits from them ? (i.e. governments, consulting companies, agriculture..)
It really depends. The product is mainly used by firefighting agencies or emergency operation centers. But because of that, almost everyone can benefit! It’s important to keep in mind that climate change through wildfires already costs the US economy upwards of 890 billion dollars each year! Mitigating wildfires naturally will save taxpayers millions of dollars.
Real estate, insurance payouts, timber reserve reduction, property damage, electricity costs, and theect. The list goes on for the people who could benefit from this technology.
We currently have many customers in Australia, North America as well as Latin America. We are looking into Canada as well as the USA, where there is a lot of opportunity. We are always looking at markets that could really make use of our services.
-Is there competition in your professional industry ?
There is no direct competition quite yet, because it’s still all so new. At the moment, more and more companies are working in the field of fire specializing in different solutions at the same time and, consequently, we have become complementary to one another with our services. For example, some companies extinguish fires through helicopters with water inside them that fly autonomously.
-Are there any challenges or risks involved in using satellite technologies ?
In my view, the biggest risk to the world economy is that we don’t have enough satellites, and our infrastructure in orbit is not robust enough. Currently, there are only a few satellites providing useful thermal data to monitor wildfires, and none at all during the afternoon when most fires start. The biggest advantage for us is that plastic or the waste in waterways is visible. Co2 for example is not visible. Through data collection and visuals, we prove what we are doing impact on a daily basis. This is helping us to be as transparent as possible and it is helping companies communicate their own positive impact.
This is why OroraTech is setting up a whole network of thermal sensors in orbit over the next years. OroraTech can do this because of our unique know-how. Our sensors are much more cost efficient than today’s scientific satellites, deliver premier insights with more frequent observations than any other system.
The challenge is to offer information that helps our customers in making critical decisions. User shouldn’t worry about where the data is coming from, let alone worry about satellites.
-Regarding the future, what are your main milestones and long -term goals ?
We are currently raising funds in a Series B to accelerate our services. This will give us the horsepower to grow internationally, in North America and the Asian Pacific, and tackle the 10 million recurrent revenue mark. We will expand our thermal product suite to expand from the Forestry into the Climate sector as well as adjacent markets like Infrastructure and Insurance.
The next step will be to cover the afternoon gap with our new sensor network. It will provide OroraTech’s customers with several observations during the critical peak burn period, between 2pm and 6pm, and revolutionize wildfire management.
Thank you.