#226 What Working With Governments to Tackle Climate Change Looks Like w/ Julia Kumari Drapkin (ISeeChange)

Julia Kumari Drapkin is the CEO and founder of ISeeChange, a data platform that combines resident-generated insights with AI to address climate adaptation challenges. Julia’s background as a climate science reporter, covering disasters like Hurricane Katrina, inspired her to bridge the gap between people’s lived experiences and actionable climate solutions. Her expertise in storytelling and data-driven insights shapes ISeeChange's people-first approach to building climate resilience.

ISeeChange leverages ground-truth data—stories, photos, and observations—from residents and combines it with sensor, satellite, and proprietary AI models. The platform delivers actionable insights to cities, counties, and utilities, enabling them to prioritize real-time responses and long-term infrastructure design to adapt to 21st-century climate risks. By creating a feedback loop between communities and decision-makers, ISeeChange helps build trust, improve climate outcomes, and unlock the value of previously siloed data.

In this episode, Julia shares insights on:

• Ground-Truth Data Integration combining resident observations with existing satellite and sensor data, delivering more granular and actionable insights for managing floods, heat waves, and infrastructure failures
• Adaptation Over Politics, evident by how they are growing fastest in Republican-led states, showing that climate impacts are bipartisan and adaptation solutions resonate when framed around local needs like infrastructure protection and economic resilience
• AI-Driven data processing, enabling faster prioritization of critical tasks while transforming anecdotal community feedback into validated, actionable intelligence for utilities and governments

Enjoy!

📝 Show Notes:

Topics 

• 03:01 Data-Driven Solutions for Climate Adaptation
• 05:50 The Role of AI in Climate Data
• 12:08 The Importance of Ground Truth Data
• 15:04 Government and Climate Tech: A Complex Relationship
• 17:54 The Future of Climate Adaptation and Mitigation
• 20:48 Challenges and Opportunities in GovTech
• 24:13 Political Resilience in Climate Solutions
• 27:08 Insurance and Climate Risk
• 29:59 Building Community Trust in Climate Data
• 32:47 The Human Element
• 36:07 Feedback Loops and Learning from Mistakes
• 38:59 Sales Cycles and Market Dynamics
• 41:49 Finding Common Ground

Links

• Julia Kumari Drapkin | ISeeChange
• Connect with Somil on LinkedIn | Connect with Silas on LinkedIn