Australian Red Cross announces partnership with local start-up Climasens to scale climate intelligence platform through the Humanitech Lab

The start-up will receive $500,000 in grant funding to scale its climate risk platform.
It follows a pilot between Climasens and Humanitech, an initiative of Australian Red Cross, to identify people most at risk of heatwaves in South Australia.
The scale project will support Australian Red Cross and municipalities across Australia to better monitor heat waves and their impact on at-risk populations.

Climasens, a climate intelligence start-up, has received a boost to scale its impact through the Humanitech Lab. The innovation program is spearheaded by Humanitech, an initiative of Australian Red Cross, focused on harnessing technology and social innovation to meet humanitarian need.

Thanks to support from founding partner, Telstra Foundation, the program will provide $500,000 in grant funding alongside capacity building to scale Climasens’ location-based climate intelligence platform to support Australian communities and organisations to build climate resilience.

The scale funding follows the completion of a pilot project between Climasens and Australian Red Cross to utilise the platform for the Telecross REDi program, an Australian Red Cross service providing phone support to vulnerable and isolated people during heatwaves.

Penny Harrison, Chief of Staff at Australian Red Cross, said that the pilot focused on enabling better access to climate and population risk data to help Red Cross teams identify where people are most at risk of heatwaves in South Australia to inform decision-making and program outreach.

Ms Harrison said: “The pilot project with Climasens and Telecross REDi demonstrated the power of how placing climate data in the hands of people supporting communities, which helps with better planning and decision making and ultimately increases the value of humanitarian services to people who need it.”

Adelide Mutinda, Humanitech’s Innovation Program Manager, said: “Climasens offers a unique, scalable opportunity to increase access to better climate information. We believe this technology has broad applications to help organisations supporting communities impacted by climate change.”

The scale project of the Humanitech Lab will support Climasens continue to develop their heat risk service. This will support Australian Red Cross, other organisations and municipalities across Australia to monitor heat waves and their impact on at-risk populations in real-time to better support climate resilience planning and investment decisions.

Joseph Glesta, Co-Founder and CEO of Climasens, said: “We are focusing on heat risk as our starting point, as we believe this is an overlooked and under-serviced area within climate risk software. We hope to change that by supporting organisations with the data they need to make the right decisions now and into the future.”

“We are thrilled to receive this funding and want to thank Australian Red Cross, Humanitech and Telstra Foundation for the support - we look forward to making an impact in the world and that has been bolstered today with this generous investment.”

The Humanitech Lab is a unique opportunity for start-ups to access grant funding, mentorship, network development and support to harness the opportunities provided by technological innovation to better serve humanity.

Jackie Coates, CEO Telstra Foundation, said: “Technology can help us to better understand the tangible impacts of climate change and also scale solutions that enable resilience.

“When start-ups like Climasens and organisations work together to combine expertise, we create an incredible opportunity to benefit people and the planet.”