By Riley Kaminer
Have you felt a bit hotter than normal lately? It’s not you – it’s the planet, which is warming at a record pace. 2022 was the sixth-warmest year on record based on NOAA’s temperature data. The 10 warmest years in the historical record have all occurred since 2010.
Cities are warming even faster than the global average. The average temperature in urban areas is 1.5° to 2° Celsius (2.7° to 3.6° Fahrenheit) warmer than in rural areas. This is because cities have more concrete and asphalt, which trap heat, and fewer trees, which help to cool the air.
These increased temperatures are not simply uncomfortable – they are dangerous. The rapid warming of the planet is causing a number of dangerous problems including more extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and harm to human health.
Jay Sadiq has experienced these problems first-hand. He landed in Miami last month from Dubai, perhaps two of the major global cities that will feel the heat most acutely.
But Sadiq is no environmentalist, no scientist, no policymaker. Rather, he’s an entrepreneur keen on solving problems. And what bigger problem to solve than global warming itself?
Sadiq’s new-to-Miami business is called FortyGuard. The team started at the bottom, quite literally, by developing a more climate-conscious form of asphalt. “Once we took it to market, we started to face a lot of resistance from investors,” he told Refresh Miami. They noted that producing the asphalt would require a lot of machinery and manpower, making it very hard to scale. Plus, the company would have to fight the incumbents who have been in the space for decades.
Eventually one investor asked a question that would change FortyGuard’s entire trajectory: “Where are you going to put the asphalt?”
Sadiq’s immediate response? “Everywhere.”
“That doesn’t make sense because not everywhere is hot,” replied the investor. “You need to define where the hot zones are, and then strategically apply your solution to those areas.”
With his curiosity piqued, Sadiq and his team – which is now 15 people strong – embarked on a quest to find these hot spots. Figuring it out proved more difficult than he anticipated. First, they tried satellite imagery, but that data was insufficiently granular to be useful in urban contexts. So Sadiq and team developed their own solution.
Through FortyGuard’s SaaS platform, users can visualize the exact key areas where temperatures are increasing the most – and understand why. Its artificial intelligence-powered system then provides suggestions to improve such as increasing the tree canopy, finding a more efficient irrigation system, or how to optimize landscaping and hardscaping. The platform can be used by a wide variety of organizations, including governments and private sector consultants, environmental experts, investors, academics, and more.
“I believe that half of the solution is understanding the problem,” Sadiq asserted.
And in Miami, that problem is acute. “Miami has a lot of test beds to test these solutions.” Sadiq, who ended up in Miami as part of the latest Techstars accelerator cohort, has already spoken to a wide range of local public servants and climate tech innovators.
His perspective on Miami’s increased temperatures? “Climate change is becoming a bigger, more intense problem than we thought.” Equally though, Miami can be a hotbed for solutions. “This can be a success story that you take to other places across the globe.”
Tackling global warming one city at a time, from Miami to the world.
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