Looking back on the past few days of low temperatures, ice, snow, power and water outages, and more, it's time to focus on innovation for resilience. Photo courtesy of ABC13

Greater Houston and all of Texas have faced enough persistent challenges over the past seven years that communities and businesses are at a breaking point. Not just financially and economically, but at societal and emotional levels expected from repeated natural and man-made disasters.

Increasingly, the focus on "resilience" as a call to action has become a buzzword rather than measure of performance by public and private sector decision-makers. Simply, our version of resilience is defined as pre-disaster risk mitigation and investment, not recovery and rebuilding after the fact, which is precisely what is being debated across traditional and social media.

As families, small businesses, larger corporations, neighborhoods, and communities require stability, predictability, and frankly reliability, there is now disappointment and disillusion across party lines for our public agencies, programs, officials. When the last major freeze and snowfall hit Texas, the state's power grid ERCOT and the legislature were warned that unless immediate steps were taken to invest in our electrical grid, an expected collapse of the entire system would leave entire cities and potentially the state in darkness with life-threatening consequences. Review any of the published recommendations from previous disasters and each conclusion identifies necessary and urgent investment, re-engineering, and technological innovation. And yet many of those findings are but another can kicked down the road.

While finger-pointing, investigations, hearings, reports, studies can be the actions of our elected and appointed officials, we turn to entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators, and investors as the path forward. Want to add to your blood pressure? Read all the After-Action Reports and Lessons-Learned Analyses — from as far back as Hurricane Andrew to the most recent disasters, including snowstorms, derechos, wildfires, and now COVID-19. Very little changes in these documents regarding the failures of government and/or the significant gaps between alerts, warnings, preparation, response, recovery, rebuilding. More recently, analysis and assessments provided by Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania and the Insurance Information Institute suggest a 1:4+ return on investment for pre-disaster resilience.

Communities often are asked to rely upon hydrological engineering and science as the holy grails in response to our floods, storms, hurricanes. And yet, there is a new "class" of data scientists, analytic tools, curated information, and significant user interfaces that have changed how government, industry, civic, academia and philanthropy can allocate their resources in more efficient and effective ways to unleash innovative resilience. Emerging enterprises and organizations to watch that are driving the "new resilience data science" for entrepreneurs and innovators alike to develop the next generation of insight include Jupiter Intelligence, HazardHub, ResilientGrid, and EcoMetrics.

What is rarely captured in the post-incident studies and gatherings is the powerful impact of the "GSD" networks — "The Get Shit Done" relationships, partnerships, tools and resources mobilized by unleashing innovation! And the good news is that Greater Houston as well as across the nation, a number of companies, products, integrated data-equipment, digital platforms, and best practices have emerged from several innovation ecosystems that should be brought to the forefront of any next steps for community and civic leaders seeking to address a 21st century resilience agenda.

There are the data and platform folks — Umanity, FoodBot, GotSpot, Crowd Source Rescue (all based in Houston) along with Harbor, R3Water, and a host of other national firms — for example that have addressed the speed by which needs, resources, information and actionable intelligence can align to assist volunteers, neighborhoods, philanthropy, and small businesses. As previous senior leadership of FEMA have admitted, the public sector can no longer be the go-to resource during every disaster, incident, and threat.If we are to democratize resilience because no one entity can afford continued losses — such as the insurance and reinsurance sector — nor is there enough taxpayer dollars to fix our critical infrastructure, then we must spark private-philanthropic-public partnerships through innovation.

If COVID -19 taught us anything, it's that we continue to face inventory management supply-chain, and resilient inventory problems that have been identified during and after previous disasters. With blockchain, advanced sensors and monitors, robotics and remote screening, reopening Greater Houston and the US can be done with innovative health technologies such as San Antonio-based Xenex.

In regards to the challenge before us, we must recall that the demand and intersection for an energy, water and data "nexus" began to take off in response to the Texas and California droughts, rose again to the forefront during multiple hurricanes in the US, and are a now the latest critical infrastructure focus in the post snowstorms of 2021.

Why is having Elon Musk's GigaFactory in Texas so vital to resilience innovation? Because the research and product development of batteries to retain solar and wind produced power can directly impact the load-demands in advance of an oncoming weather or worse a cybersecurity threat to the grid. Sunnova — another Houston brand — has been proving the benefit of storage capacity from its work in Puerto Rico and now exhibits the unique performance for future off-grid resilience of homes, medical offices, and vital services.

Until and unless the public sector opens the doors for these and other innovators through immediate and permanent changes in procurement and contracting, strategic partnerships, incentives and credits — while frankly sharing the leadership function with entrepreneurs, inventors, and investors — we will all pay the price for the failure to act.

There is still work to be done from a legislative and governmental perspective, but more and more innovators — especially in Houston — are proving to be essential in creating a better future for the next historic disaster we will face. The Insurance Information Institute's National Resilience Accelerator Initiative and Resilience Innovation Hub Collaboratory (with its flagship in Houston) is working to unleash the best of Texas', the Nation's and the World's best ideas, resources, information and investments.

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Richard Seline is the co-founder of the Houston-based Resilience Innovation Hub.

The innovations and Houston startups that came out of Hurricane Harvey are no coincidence. Richard Seline of ResilientH2O Partners explains how he's helping foster new hurricane and flood prevention technologies in the Bayou City. Photo courtesy of ResilientH20

New Houston hub calls for collaboration for flood and hurricane prevention innovation

Houston innovators podcast episode 43

When it comes to insurance, most people's interaction is pretty limited buying a plan, filing claims when need be, and paying the monthly bill. However, unbeknownst to most of their insured clients, insurance companies are investing in insuratech and new innovations within the natural disaster space.

Richard Seline, managing director of ResilientH20, along with the Insurance Information Institute and The Cannon, to launch the Gulf Coast & Southwest Resilience Innovation Hub to foster this type of technology and bring insuratech startups and the big insurance players to the table — something that's not often done.

"It's two different languages," Seline says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "There's a whole language and a whole mindset within the insurance industry that is not real well known."

The hub, which is based in downtown Houston's Cannon Tower, has been hard at work hosting virtual pitch events and networking opportunities since it launched in June just as the 2020 hurricane season commenced. Seline explains the mission is threefold: allow for reverse pitching where insurance companies tell innovators what their challenges are in hopes of inspiring new technology, introducing insuratech companies to potential investors or clients, and fostering innovation for new natural disaster prevention innovations.

On the podcast, Seline discusses new endeavors he's working on within his organization and explains the role his feels the new hub has in Houston's innovation ecosystem. To him, the city must work collaboratively to move the needle on growth of its innovation ecosystem.

"The good news is there is a lot of great activity underway in Houston right now — no questions asked," Seline says. "What we are doing can be seen as complimentary and not competitive with anyone else."

From game-changing startups to watch out for to upcoming events and partnerships for the Gulf Coast & Southwest Resilience Innovation Hub, check out the podcast. You can listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.



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3 Houston innovators who made headlines in May 2025

Innovators to Know

Editor's note: Houston innovators are making waves this month with revolutionary VC funding, big steps towards humanoid robotics, and software that is impacting the agriculture sector. Here are three Houston innovators to know right now.

Zach Ellis, founder and partner of South Loop Ventures

Zach Ellis. Photo via LinkedIn

Zach Ellis Jr., founder and general partner of South Loop Ventures, says the firm wants to address the "billion-dollar blind spot" of inequitable distribution of venture capital to underrepresented founders of color. The Houston-based firm recently closed its debut fund for more than $21 million. Learn more.

Ty Audronis, CEO and founder of Tempest Droneworx

Ty Audronis, CEO and founder of Tempest Droneworx

Ty Audronis, center. Photo via LinkedIn.

Ty Audronis and his company, Tempest Droneworx, made a splash at SXSW Interactive 2025, winning the Best Speed Pitch award at the annual festival. The company is known for it flagship product, Harbinger, a software solution that agnostically gathers data at virtually any scale and presents that data in easy-to-understand visualizations using a video game engine. Audronis says his company won based on its merits and the impact it’s making and will make on the world, beginning with agriculture. Learn more.

Nicolaus Radford, CEO of Persona AI

Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus RoboticsNicolaus Radford. Image via LinkedIn

Houston-based Persona AI and CEO Nicolaus Radford continue to make steps toward deploying a rugged humanoid robot, and with that comes the expansion of its operations at Houston's Ion. Radford and company will establish a state-of-the-art development center in the prominent corner suite on the first floor of the building, with the expansion slated to begin in June. “We chose the Ion because it’s more than just a building — it’s a thriving innovation ecosystem,” Radford says. Learn more.

Houston university to launch artificial intelligence major, one of first in nation

BS in AI

Rice University announced this month that it plans to introduce a Bachelor of Science in AI in the fall 2025 semester.

The new degree program will be part of the university's department of computer science in the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing and is one of only a few like it in the country. It aims to focus on "responsible and interdisciplinary approaches to AI," according to a news release from the university.

“We are in a moment of rapid transformation driven by AI, and Rice is committed to preparing students not just to participate in that future but to shape it responsibly,” Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said in the release. “This new major builds on our strengths in computing and education and is a vital part of our broader vision to lead in ethical AI and deliver real-world solutions across health, sustainability and resilient communities.”

John Greiner, an assistant teaching professor of computer science in Rice's online Master of Computer Science program, will serve as the new program's director. Vicente Ordóñez-Román, an associate professor of computer science, was also instrumental in developing and approving the new major.

Until now, Rice students could study AI through elective courses and an advanced degree. The new bachelor's degree program opens up deeper learning opportunities to undergrads by blending traditional engineering and math requirements with other courses on ethics and philosophy as they relate to AI.

“With the major, we’re really setting out a curriculum that makes sense as a whole,” Greiner said in the release. “We are not simply taking a collection of courses that have been created already and putting a new wrapper around them. We’re actually creating a brand new curriculum. Most of the required courses are brand new courses designed for this major.”

Students in the program will also benefit from resources through Rice’s growing AI ecosystem, like the Ken Kennedy Institute, which focuses on AI solutions and ethical AI. The university also opened its new AI-focused "innovation factory," Rice Nexus, earlier this year.

“We have been building expertise in artificial intelligence,” Ordóñez-Román added in the release. “There are people working here on natural language processing, information retrieval systems for machine learning, more theoretical machine learning, quantum machine learning. We have a lot of expertise in these areas, and I think we’re trying to leverage that strength we’re building.”