Verizon is investing in a new generation of life-saving disaster resilience technology

Verizon has a long history of showing up for communities when it matters most. Through our Community Disaster Resilience Initiative, we're working alongside communities to help them prepare for, respond to and recover from natural disasters with more resilience.

But we aren’t just responding to today’s challenges, we’re investing in the technology that will aid with tomorrow’s disasters. As part of the 2025 Verizon Disaster Resilience Prize, we’ve partnered with MIT Solve to award $1M in grants to four innovators disaster-proofing the future.

Each of the solutions already does or could integrate with Verizon systems to enhance  real-time capture and sharing of weather data, remote sensing and control of vehicles and tools, or helping to power critical mobile and other devices. By enabling these technologies, Verizon is helping to modernize disaster resilience and better equip first responders, emergency management agencies and the communities they serve.

Learn more about the prize winners and their technologies below.

Meet the innovators

BurnBot

“A Zamboni, except with vegetation and fire.” Meet BurnBot, a wildfire prevention solution that uses tele-operated robots to build halos of protection around susceptible land. The robots  have already been demoed by PG&E and other fire-service organizations in California.

FNN

Transporting data nearly as fast as the lightning they track, FNN deploys edge computing sensors and uses machine learning to identify high-risk lightning strikes that could cause fires and proactively alert first responders.

Footprint Project

Whether it is a grey sky or a blue one, there’s the Footprint Project, providing mobile solar panel arrays that can power needed infrastructure and be remotely monitored. The solution has already aided in response to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, the Maui wildfires and Texas storm outages.

Atlantic Council and ClimaSens

With a mission of reducing harm to communities around the planet, the Atlantic Council and ClimaSens transform heat from an invisible killer to a preventable risk through vulnerability mapping that enables early warning and mitigation planning.

Learn more about how we support innovative technologies to face natural disasters.