Emergency App

Emergency tech is a disaster. In 2021, natural disasters caused $152B in damage and 724 deaths in the US. Those deaths are mostly preventable if we innovate how we provide this generic, scattered, inaccurate, and non-actionable information.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) documented a record 22 billion dollar disasters in 2020, and 20 more recently in 2021. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) specifically identifies the need for innovation here in goal 11; “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”

It further targets that “by 2030, [we will] significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses relative to global gross domestic product caused by disasters, including water-related disasters, with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations.” Emergency will build more resilient communities, and provide an equitable service to citizens & governments.

Our Emergency OS (EOS) aggregates disaster data, personalizes actionable information for citizens, and provides situational awareness and engagement tools to first responders to build more resilient communities:

• Citizen Emergency App | Usable without cell reception, with data cached from hundreds of sources, and bluetooth mesh links between neighbors & first responders.
• Data Processing Engine | Aggregation and AI personalization of data to make it relevant and actionable to the individual and their situation.
• Emergency Dashboard | Situational Awareness SaaS portal for Emergency Managers & Insurance Providers to engage with their constituents.

The global emergency notification software market has a top-down TAM of $27.3 Billion with a 20.4% CAGR by 2026. In 2020, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and other severe weather set a record of 22 total $1+ Billion disasters in 2020.

We’ll monetize partnerships with State, County, and City Emergency Managers, providing their official Mobile App and all data in exchange for onboarding their Citizens. We’ll also seek partnerships with social media crisis response teams (Facebook, Twitter, etc), media companies (Weather Channel, local news, etc), and insurance providers (State Farm and Allstate) to market the solution to their networks as a social impact initiative:

• Citizens | Deliver vital preparedness information, share relevant emergency alerts, and pinpoint available supplies to the 97% of the 330 Million Americans with cell phones through web and mobile apps for free, always.

• Emergency Managers | Enable officials in 59 US States & Territories, 3,143 Counties, 3,982 Colleges, and 73 National VOAD’s seamless access to citizens to provide critical information.

• Insurance Providers (Phase 2) | Offer customer engagement and in-app marketing opportunities to the 2,538 property & casualty insurance companies in the United States.
• Mobile Carriers & Satellites (Phase 3) | Partner with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to preload applications on all devices, collaborate with Google & Apple on data & notifications, and incorporate low orbit satellite connections.

Our Founder Joe Russo has 10 Years Experience as a tech entrepreneur, founding the South Florida tech industry association, and a nonprofit startup accelerator. He worked in Monroe County EOC for 6 days after Hurricane Irma. Our Lead Developer James Olejar has 14 Yrs Experience as developer & team leader for venture backed startups, most notably as head of innovation for 911 GovTech Startup ($205M capital raised). Our Lead Designer Andrew Pignato has 14 Yrs Experience as mobile app and software designer for Fortune 500 brands, focusing on high quality experiences for consumers.

Our Industry Advisory Board has 150 years of experience in emergency management & enterprise technology, including former Florida Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz, FPL’s VP of Technology Michael Fowler, former Audible CFO Andy Kaplan, former Palm Beach Emergency Management Director Bill Johnson, Rapid SOS’s Founding Product VP Reinhard Ekl, and Everbridge’s former head of Tech innovation Zeeshan Sheikh. Our Academic Advisors have 30 years experience in emergency preparedness and evacuation, including Dr. John Renne of Florida Atlantic University, Dr. Xilei Zhao of the University of Florida, and Dr. Dario Bonaretti of Nova Southeastern University.

In 2017, Joe led logistics for food and water distribution in the Florida Keys for the week immediately after Category 5 Hurricane Irma. Without any training, communications, or technology we served over 20,000 in 5 days. His career building technology ecosystems for Fortune 500 Companies and venture-backed startups led him to ask why so much innovation was lacking in this often overlooked space. After years of researching and validating at all levels of emergency management, he saw it as his purpose to solve this resilience problem affecting 40% of Americans annually.

We launched our MVP during Hurricane Ian, collaborated with state Emergency Managers,  and received national recognition from the American Business Journals (1.2M received) to Fox News (1.1M viewed).

We're now working to scale the applications into government situational awareness paradigms as our first customers.

We're working to solve a global problem, and need a global team to support our mission to save lives through technology.

We see our ability to solve this ever growing problem in the same way emergency managers breakdown their role into four (4) distinct sections:

• Mitigate | By partnering with data providers, we can personalize a person's climate risk to better plan for disasters while recommending protective actions like insurance products and home improvements.
• Prepare | By partnering with businesses, we can help communities understand the resources available to them immediately before a storm, like food or gas at their markets.
• Respond | By partnering with government First Responders and Emergency Notification companies, we enhance existing systems to better communicate risk actions like evacuations by using technology resources like AI and natural language processing.
• Recover | By partnering with volunteer organizations, we can better collect disaster assessment data to prioritize government resources and financial improvements to rebuild infrastructure on line sooner & better

Working with MIT, we can highlight the use of 21st century innovations to combat the worst possible eventualities of our world. And hopefully inspire more to do the same.

Some governments have developed their own mobile applications on a local level; but no direct national competitors exist. There are indirect competitors and potential partners offering emergency notification platforms (Everbridge, Carbyne, Rave Alert, Genasys) and situational awareness dashboards (WebEOC, DisasterTech, TAK), with our key advantages being:

• Citizen-First Tech | There is no evident natural disaster mobile application or technology resource geared towards informatively connecting citizens with emergency management leaders or volunteer organizations.

• 5G Mesh Networks & Low Orbit Satellites | There is currently no technology solution that allows citizens, emergency managers, and volunteer organizations to collaborate without cellular or internet connection.

Before | Mitigation & Preparedness Phases

UNSDG Indicator 11.5.1: Direct economic loss attributed to disasters in relation to global domestic product (GDP)

Key Question: Can we improve preparedness rates in at-risk communities, leading to the reduction of insured economic losses?

Ideal Outcome: 10% Reduction in insured disaster losses.

• Emergency Profile Score (EPS) | Survey basic preparedness based on total scores from FEMA National Risk Index.

• Insurance Coverage | Track user’s applicable insurance, flood insurance, and parametric insurance for proper coverage.

During | Response Phase

UNSDG Indicator 11.5.2: Number of deaths, missing persons and directly affected persons attributed to disasters per 100,000 population

Key Question: Can we improve evacuation rates in impacted areas, removing more people from fatality equations and reducing deaths?

Ideal Outcome: 25% Reduction in indirect fatalities.

• Evacuations | Track real-time clearance time from notification to evacuation, while comparing to projections and past incidents.

• Shelter In Place | Survey individuals and families who are staying or leaving communities in the path of disaster.

• Notifications | Track the number of citizens informed during specific incidents, aligning to severity, timeframe, and engagements to their response.

After | Recovery Phase

UNSDG Indicator 11.5.3: Damage to critical infrastructure and number of disruptions to basic services, attributed to disasters

Key Question: Can we improve access to critical resources in the days and weeks after disaster, providing more equitable volunteer support and government funding to traditionally underserved populations?

Ideal Outcome: 25% Increase in federal support requests.

• Incidents | Engage residents and governments in the post-incident disaster assessment, providing needed situational awareness to real-time task prioritization and FEMA grant reports.

• Feedback | Ask for feedback, including on behalf of government agencies to better plan for future deployments and disasters.

• Losses | Provide insurance updates, gap insurance, and FEMA financial resources in a turbotax like format that tracks needs and engagements.

Emergency addresses Sustainable Cities & Communities UNSDG 11, to "make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable" with our target bring 11.5:

"By 2030, significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses relative to global gross domestic product caused by disasters, including water-related disasters, with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations"

Indicator 11.5.1 | Number of deaths, missing persons and directly affected persons attributed to disasters per 100,000 population.

• People | 25% Reduction in indirect fatalities in natural disasters

Indicator 11.5.2 | Direct economic loss attributed to disasters in relation to global domestic product (GDP)

• Property | 10% Reduction in insured disaster losses.

Indicator 11.5.3 | Damage to critical infrastructure and number of disruptions to basic services, attributed to disasters.

• Equity | 25% Increase in federal support requests.
  

We can revolutionize how humanity responds to and survives disaster.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) documented a record 60 unique billion dollar disasters in the US during 2020 - 2022. The 330 Million people living in the country are a mere sample size of the 8 Billion people in mostly lesser conditions throughout the globe.

We will offer Emergency Management the modern tools to save lives, and Citizens the technology in the palm of their hands to best prepare themselves.

• Inputs: Emergency Operating System (EOS) for AI-powered situational awareness to citizens and first responders.
• Outputs: Real-time intelligence forming a clear data-backed Common Operating Picture allowing for better decision-making before, during, and after disasters.
• Short-Term Outcomes: Clear understanding of disaster impacts to citizens and governments as they affect our communities.
• Mid-Term Outcomes: Save more lives, limit economic loss, and provide more equitable resources in disasters around the globe.
• Long-Term Outcomes: Globally shifted mindset where climate oriented fatalities are rare, and seen as the tragedies they are. 

• Citizen Emergency App | Our mobile apps are built using React Native for both Android & Apple devices, with an AWS Serverless backend. We integrate Bluetooth Mesh Network SDK's to achieve wireless capacities. Low Orbit Satellite and 5G capabilities will be layered in overtime as the technology capacity increases in carrier networks.

• Data Processing Engine | Our AI & ML applications use AWS, ArcGIS, and MongoDB architecture, with specific products running algorithms and processing data. We'll also partner with companies specialized in specific aspects of this space, taking real-time GIS flooding data from satellites to calculate impacts for example.

• Emergency Dashboard | Built on the ArcGIS Javascript API, and integrated with notification technology including FEMA's IPAWS Emergency Alert System. SMS, Email, and other technologies will be pieces into one Common Operating Picture for the situational awareness paradigm.

As a certified B Corporation, we prioritize Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) into our longterm roadmap.

In my past role, I led DEI efforts at the nonprofit association I founded in 2015. With over 200 corporate members, we recruited a board representative of our diverse membership and appointed an ex-officio member to advise our organization on proper steps to take in best uniting our community.

Being in startup phase, we've developed a simple DEI framework to follow with aims to adopt a formal policy with our team once we have five (5) founding employees to collaborate on the document based from that framework.

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) SaaS platform offering $.10 per citizen, per year to governments (Florida = $2.25M / 59 US States & Territories = $160M). Additional revenue features geared towards disaster declarations will be added as company scales and be funded by FEMA Public Assistance reimbursements to bypass customer budget cycles.

By 2028, we project a $60M B2G SaaS opportunity in the US alone, indicative of 30% of the total market for our initial vertical. With added features and disaster activation revenue, we project a total annual revenue of $240M.

As we expand, we will raise additional capital to advance to other verticals and sectors, while collaborating on research grants with universities to commercialize innovative technologies.

Received $500,000 commitment from the state of Florida, with partnerships from major companies like the Weather Channel.

Conversations are ongoing, and we aim to deploy our product in market during 2023 hurricane season.