Spotted: Traditional weather platforms tend to offer raw data but without much contextual interpretation. This can make it difficult for organisations to usefully act on the information. ClimaLinks was founded to bridge what the company refers to as the “final mile of innovation” and turn weather data into useful, actionable insights.
The ClimaLinks platform is powered by Generative AI and provides weather relations management (WRM) software and ‘Data-as-a-Service’ that enable companies in weather-sensitive industries, such as construction and agriculture, to operate more efficiently and safely. ClimaLinks connects weather insights with organisational planning tools, making it a part of decision-making processes.
The WRM platform includes both a standalone dashboard and an API that links to existing SaaS management tools. It is designed to be responsive to user’s needs and transform complex meteorological data into actionable insights, so that tasks are performed in optimal conditions. The platform includes a task monitor to help optimise operations, an asset monitor to conduct risk management, and a schedule tracker that can help organisations plan ahead and prepare for extreme and potentially dangerous weather.
ClimaLinks has seen recent investment from student-run venture fund S2S Ventures. The pre-seed funding is intended to accelerate development of the startup’s platform.
Climate change is making weather forecasting more important and Springwise has spotted innovations such as a platform that identifies environmental risk to utilities and a system that makes hyperlocal rain predictions.
Spotted: Rainfall affects many aspects of a farmer’s work. Deciding when to sow seeds, where to pasture cattle and other animals, and when to harvest are some of the many daily, weather-dependent decisions farmers make. For smallholder farmers, a miscalculation leading to crop failure could severely impact an entire family’s health.
For farmers living in the tropical regions of the world, forecasts are often of little help as rainstorms come and go quickly and can be very localised. Seeking to make weather forecasting more predictable for these regions, Swedish technology company Ignitia has developed a new method. The results are proving to be far more accurate than current global climate forecast models, something that Ignitia achieves by focusing on hyperlocal climates and analysis based on high-resolution satellite imagery.
Ignitia’s forecasts are detailed enough to provide farm-level predictions, and because the company uses satellite data, they do not require information from ground stations – infrastructure that is frequently unavailable in tropical regions. For farmers, adjustments that range from when to move heavy machinery to when to hire additional workers have direct financial results.
The startup’s insights are available in four different packages, starting with a mobile app for seven-day weather forecasts that include wind, heat, rain, and humidity for a three-kilometre area. Ignitia Smart adds in customised alerts for farm-specific needs, suggestions for possible actions, and rainfall predictions up to six months in advance.
Ignitia API provides regular updates on the client’s platform of choice and allows larger producers, distributors, and others in the agricultural supply chain to better predict crop yield and forecast risks. The most substantial service the company offers is Ignitia Enterprise, gathering climate intelligence from multiple locations for business-wide insights and information for decision-making.
Satellites are helping farmers in a number of ways, with innovations featured in Springwise’s library including using imagery to help unbanked growers access loans and to provide real-time yield predictions.
Spotted: Agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate changes and extreme weather events, and as global warming heats the planet, this vulnerability will get worse. Seasonal climate variability already frequently undermines farm yields, reduces food availability, and lowers income. Small-scale agricultural producers, who often feed themselves from their farms as well as others, are especially affected by unpredictable rainfall. Oko was created to help farmers deal with this uncertainty.
The startup provides low-cost crop insurance for small farmers. Oko (which is the name of an African deity who protects harvests), uses the concept of index insurance. This uses data analysis and risk calculation, rather than onsite inspections, to create cheaper and more accessible insurance.
Farmers sign up and manage their insurance using their mobile phones. They pay around $20 (around €18.60) for one season’s coverage of approximately 1.7 hectares. Oko analyses the risk to each plot and the cost of insurance using historical and weather data.
The company uses real-time satellite data and rainfall monitoring to monitor for floods and check the amount of rainfall needed for a good harvest. If there is a flood or if rainfall drops below a certain amount, a payment to the farmers is triggered automatically. Because farmers only need to sign up once to receive future payouts automatically, it reduces the chances that these smallholder farmers will fall victim to fraud and fake insurance scams every time a drought hits.
Tackling climate change is partly about building resiliency, and insurance that is affordable and easy to use is one way to do this. Springwise has also spotted other innovations aimed at building climate resilience. These include improving the biodiversity of forests with fungus, and using modular greenhouses to protect farmers from the effects of extreme weather.
Spotted: Being able to better track weather and predict near-future conditions allows communities to better plan for and respond to the natural disasters that are becoming more severe and frequent, partly as a result of climate change. One solution comes from Zurich-based climate tech data platform Jua. The company uses an artificial intelligence (AI) prediction model to create regularly updated, high-resolution weather forecasts.
Rather than simply tweaking existing methodologies, Jua has built an entirely new weather prediction platform. The new modelling system provides details of one square kilometre at a time and includes weather anywhere in the world. The platform uses tens of millions of sensors to provide high-resolution imagery. By comparison, current systems typically rely on hundreds of thousands of sensors.
More than 15 different parameters are tracked by the platform, including wind speed and direction, precipitation, and air pressure. The company adds new areas of information to the platform every quarter. The power of the AI solution contributes to significantly less computing energy use, despite providing greater volumes of data and levels of detail.
The platform is currently available on request with plans to release it more broadly in early 2023. In October 2022, the company closed a successful round of seed funding that raised €2.5 million to put towards the full platform launch.
As climate change continues to affect more and more communities, access to the highest quality, near-to-real-time data becomes ever more essential. Springwise has spotted projects facilitating this, from a weather data app for farmers to renewable energy predictions that help producers match supply with demand.
Spotted: Just like sunshine, wind is a fairly constant aspect of the weather, yet as an energy source, it still suffers from variability. Now, a small, sleek wind turbine that generates power from winds as low as five miles per hour could tackle this issue and be one of the swiftest ways for buildings to become carbon neutral. Created by Aeromine Technologies, the bladeless turbines take up a fraction of the footprint of traditional wind farms and produce the same amount of power as that of 16 solar panels.
Designed specifically for use on top of large buildings with flat roofs, the turbines are easy to install and maintain, particularly because they do not have rotor blades. The turbines connect directly to a building’s electrical system and work much like a racecar does, using aerodymanic designs to amplify the flow of air away from the structure. Despite working constantly, the turbines are completely silent.
Aeromine generally installs 20 to 40 of the turbines on the side of a building’s roof that receives the most consistent wind. That is usually enough to provide all of the power required by a large commercial or residential building. When combined with solar, a building could run completely on renewable energy.
Making better use of ignored spaces is a particularly effective means of reducing reliance on petrol power. Springwise has spotted small turbines harnessing hydroelectric power from slow flowing streams and rivers, as well as nanotechnology being used to generate energy from locations where rivers meet the sea.
Following a record-breaking heatwave in the UK and western Europe, with climate change meaning that sweltering temperatures are likely to become more common, Smith Mordak outlines 10 ways to design buildings that remain cool in hot weather.
Want to design cool architecture? Of course you do! Follow these principles and you too can be a cool designer of cool spaces that don’t heat up our climate – not cool.
Photo by Lara Swimmer
Ground-source heat pumps and low-lying buildings
Low-lying buildings stay cooler than tall skinny ones because the ground maintains a pretty even temperature. Ground-source heat pumps essentially supercharge this process by facilitating depositing heat in the ground in summer and drawing heat from the ground in winter.
Host House in Salt Lake City (pictured), was designed by architects Kipp Edick and Joe Sadoski to be a net-zero building. It is mostly one-storey and uses a ground-source heat pump as one of its measures for controlling temperatures during the extremes of the Utah summers and winters.
Find out more about Host House ›
Photo by Oskar Proctor
Exposed thermal mass
Internally exposed thermal mass is a mini version of this same concept. Thermally massive materials store heat or coolness, reducing the temperature difference between day and night.
Concrete has been soaring high on the thermal mass scale for far too long. The argument goes that while you’ll emit a load of carbon dioxide making the cement, the energy you’ll save by not having to heat and cool the building as much will make up for it. This is as annoying as those ads for excessively packaged nutrient-free foodstuffs that claim you’ll ‘save’ money buying them because they’re not quite as overpriced as they were yesterday, when you’d be better off not buying them at all. Concrete does not have a monopoly on thermal mass.
Hempcrete – a mix of hemp shiv (the woody stem of the plant) and a lime binder – is a highly insulating material that also provides that much sought-after thermal mass without the huge upfront carbon cost. It’s also vapour permeable and absorbs and releases moisture depending on its environment, so it controls humidity. Other low-carbon thermally massive materials include stone, rammed earth, and unfired bricks.
Flat House in Cambridgeshire (pictured), is a zero-carbon house designed by Practice Architecture that makes extensive use of hempcrete inside and out, especially on the exposed interior walls.
Find out more about Flat House ›
Photo courtesy of BVN Donovan Hill
Air cooling
If you create a labyrinth of thermal mass in your basement then not only do you get to say “want to see my labyrinth?” when people come to visit, you also have a no-need-to-plug-in coolness store always at hand. If you slowly pass outside air across the cool walls and of your cool underground maze before bringing it into inhabited spaces, then you’ve supercooled your passive ventilation without any chillers.
The Australian Plant Bank in New South Wales (pictured) uses an underground thermal labyrinth to capture and retain the heat of the day or the cool of the night, preventing sharp temperature fluctuations and warming or cooling the building by up to 7.5 degrees centigrade. It was designed by BVN Donovan Hill.
Find out more about the Australian Plant Bank ›
Photo by Tommaso Riva
Heat extraction
As well as bringing in the cold we need to get rid of the heat. Even if you unplug everything, people still generate heat that needs removing, especially if there are a lot of people in your building.
Of course, unless your building is in a climate that never gets cold, even at night, this heat extraction needs to be controlled. Heat rises, so tall spaces that allow the heat to collect out of the way, openable windows at a high level that let the hot air out, and chimneys with wind cowls that use the passing wind to draw the air up through the building are all good tactics.
The image shows The Arc gymnasium in Bali designed by Ibuku, which uses vents at the apex of its roof to allow warm air to escape. Find out more about The Arc ›
Photo by Hufton + Crow
Keeping heat out
To reduce the amount of work the building needs to do to extract the heat or bring in the cold, well-designed buildings keep the heat out. If you don’t have a thermal labyrinth in your basement (yet!) then having a heat exchanger on your air intake/extract means you’re not losing heat in winter or gaining it in summer.
A huge way to prevent the temperature indoors from being a slave to the temperature outdoors is insulation: lovely thick insulation made from biobased, non-polluting materials. Couple this with double or triple glazing and a fat green roof (both insulating and brilliant for biodiversity) and you’re laughing.
The image shows the Maggie’s Centre for cancer patients in Leeds, designed by Heatherwick Studio and built with natural materials. Its roof is covered in plant species native to the woodlands of Yorkshire. Find about more about this Maggie’s Centre ›
Photo by Leonardo Finotti
External shading
We’re getting better at insulation, but what we’re still mostly rubbish at as a profession is external shading. This keeps the heat off the building in the first place.
Shading needs to consider orientation. Vertical shading is best for east-and west-facing facades where the sun is lower. Overhangs and horizontal shading are best for the highest sun (from the south in the northern hemisphere and north in the southern hemisphere).
Deciduous trees are also handy, given how they shed their little shading units (aka leaves) in the winter when you appreciate the sun’s warmth. Other dynamic shading options are shutters and awnings that you can move or open and close. The shading is best outside because then the heat never gets indoors, but at a push, internal shading that’s pale – so that it reflects the heat back out – is better than nothing.
Aleph Zero and Rosenbaum designed the Children Village school boarding facility in northern Brazil (pictured) with a large canopy roof framed by cross-laminated timber to shade the building.
Find out more about Children Village ›
Photo by Rasmus Hjortshøj
Green urban environments
Designing a cool building is not just about the building, but also about designing a cool environment for your building to be in. The urban heat island effect can increase temperatures in urban areas by more than 10 degrees Celsius compared to their rural neighbours. We desperately need to tackle this if we’re to ease the health impacts of heatwaves and reduce the energy demand of buildings.
This means fewer heat-emitting things in urban spaces, ie fewer cars and fewer air conditioning units pumping out hot exhaust into the streets. It also means not leaving heat batteries lying about in the sun: towns and cities tend to be stock-full of thermal mass in the form of masonry, paving, and tarmac that soak up the heat from the sun and hang on to it tightly. We need less tarmac and more green, and when we retrofit our buildings with external insulation it would be great if this was reducing the amount of masonry cooking in the sunshine.
The Karen Blixens Plads public plaza in Copenhagen (pictured), which was designed by COBE, covers sheltered parking for bicycles and features neutral-coloured tiles frequently interspersed with planting and trees.
Find out more about Karen Blixens Plads ›
Photo by Wayne W
Shaded public realm
Trees are magic. Not only do they provide shade, habitats for a gazillion species, share information and nutrients with each other and other plants through mycelium networks and improve soil health, but they also cool the air around them via evapotranspiration.
This is where the trees use the heat energy in the air to evaporate the water in their leaves. We don’t need to leave this all up to the trees, however: moving water (from waterfalls to misters) has the same effect, as when the water evaporates it leaves the air around it cooler. We can also rip off the trees’ shading technologies: keep the sun off external spaces to prevent those hard, thermally massive materials from cooking us like pizza stones.
The image shows a street in Shanghai.
Photo by Víctor de la Fuente
Pale roofs
A final dig at tarmac and its buddy, the bitumen roof, is that they are dark and so they absorb heat. If these surfaces were paler, they could help reflect heat back out of town.
Casa Banlusa (pictured) is a white-roofed villa in Valladolid designed by architecture studio Sara Acebes Anta.
Find out more about Casa Banlusa ›
Photo by Charly Broyez
Low-energy living and reduced embodied carbon
As well as ‘fabric first’ and alleviating the urban heat island effect, let’s remember that facilitating behaviours that allow us to adapt to a changing climate is also part of this story. For example, how do the acoustics inside your home allow you to work odd hours, or how can you design spaces not for fixed activities, but the flexibility to allow inhabitants to move around a house as the sun moves across the sky?
Reducing the amount of heat being generated inside a building is a concept that bridges behaviour change and building design. Pretty much everything we plug in is pumping out heat (even a fan, depressingly) so we need more efficient appliances but also to just switch stuff off. If there’s an alternative way to do something without energy, consider it!
Mars Architectes designed the apartment block in Paris (pictured) entirely from wooden modules that are also clad in timber.
This brings us almost to the end of our survey of principles for being a cool designer. There’s just one final thing, arguably the most important.
Definitely do all that stuff above, but if you want to be a really cool designer, you need to not only massively reduce the energy needed to make your projects comfortable and healthy, you also need massively reduce the embodied carbon of your projects. In other words, you need to throw off the duvet that is all those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
To our human eyes, carbon dioxide and methane are as transparent as oxygen, but if we could see infrared light, we would see the atmosphere getting more and more opaque. Those greenhouse gases are causing global heating by blocking infrared light from busting out into space, like when your duvet hides the fact that your phone is still glowing when your family thinks you’re asleep. Not cool. Not cool. Not cool.
Find out more about this apartment building ›
Smith Mordak is a multi-award-winning architect, engineer, writer and curator and the director of sustainability and physics at British engineering firm Buro Happold.
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Spotted: Weather forecasting becomes doubly useful when applied to renewable energy sources. Sweden’s Greenlytics company combines expert meteorology and data analytics with machine learning to predict how much power is likely to be produced and how much is likely to be needed by consumers. By creating a big picture understanding of how current weather conditions fit in with typical patterns for each region, the system maps production data across expected consumption.
WindMind, SolarMind, and LoadMind systems help renewable energy producers and distributers more accurately match production to variations in the volume of power used by a community. The systems combine satellite data with ground measurements that include air pressure, temperature and wind speed. As the AI learns how local topography affects weather conditions and energy output—as well as how community use varies across time—the systems’ use predictions become more accurate. Energy system operators have the option to add live production data to the system for even more accurate short-term predictions.
All three systems are provided as a cloud service and are designed for ease of use at any scale, from personal homeowners with a small array of panels, to energy farm managers overseeing thousands of devices across multiple sites. Greenlytics provides free demonstrations.
Renewable energy is increasingly being used to reduce waste and provide power from underused sources. Springwise recently spotted a flexible generator that wraps around pipes in order to turn waste heat into electricity, and a solar-powered cement production process.
