In this episode, Brian talks with Tobias Kraft, Co-Founder and CEO at  Teren, about how AI-powered environmental twins are reshaping our ability to predict and mitigate natural disaster risk. With firsthand experience surviving wildfires and a deep background in geospatial data systems, Tobias now leads efforts to digitize Earth's terrain and make climate intelligence actionable.

The conversation explores:

• How Teren builds real-time, high-resolution environmental twins to model land-based threats
   
• Why traditional risk models are breaking down in a world of five-year, hundred-year storms
   
• How hyperlocal terrain and soil data enhance decision-making for infrastructure and insurance
   
• What it takes to make climate risk data operational for landowners, utilities, and policymakers
   
• The unexpected impacts of clean energy projects on land resilience and runoff patterns

Tobias shares how his team combines satellite imagery, LiDAR, and soil physics to train AI systems that can forecast events like landslides and wildfires, and why this shift from reactive to predictive infrastructure could reshape everything from insurance underwriting to where we choose to live.

In the Post Fix, Brian and Harriet unpack the “environmental twin” concept:

• What a digital twin is and how it's evolving beyond buildings to the planet itself
   
• Why data accuracy, computational modeling, and boots-on-the-ground validation still matter
   
• How these technologies might help individuals, not just institutions, make smarter decisions

This episode is a must-listen for climate-conscious engineers, infrastructure planners, insurance leaders, and anyone working at the intersection of AI, earth systems, and natural disaster resilience.

Time Stamps:

• *(05:08) Rapid Fire
• *(15:27) Environmental Twin: Revolutionizing Natural Disaster Management
• *(23:53) The Role of Data in Predicting Environmental Threats
• *(33:51) Human Impact on the Environment
• *(49:24) Global Expansion and Data Challenges
• *(53:18) Measuring Predictive Technologies and AI
• *(1:06:39) The Post-Fix

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Solving for Tomorrow is sponsored by Geisel Software. We help you create products that seamlessly automate the physical and virtual worlds using robotics, machine learning, and so much more. Find out more at Geisel Software.

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Links

Follow Tobias  on LinkedIn

Follow Brian Geisel on LinkedIn

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