Wildfire Analytics: Operationalizing Pre-Fire Data for Financial Benefit
Instead of retreat and retrenchment, building a virtuous cycle of investment and protection.
The story of wildfire is often told in terms of destruction. Acrid skies, billion-dollar insurance losses, grid failures, communities displaced. But there’s another story hiding in plain sight — one that comes not from fear of loss but from the power of exponential tools to transform how we anticipate, measure, and respond to this risk.
For utilities, insurers, and investors, wildfire has become the ultimate “regime break.” What used to be manageable through historical averages has now leapt beyond the thresholds of traditional models. The 2017–2018 fire seasons in California alone showed that volatility could erase decades of assumptions in a single year. Insurers pulled back. Utilities faced bankruptcy. Bond markets began pricing in climate exposure.
This is Disruption
This is the definition of disruption. The cause is the changing environment, which is exactly what Athena’s Voice of the Acre® was designed to help organizations navigate.
From Flat Maps (Scarce Data) to Geospatial Risk Intelligence
The old scarcity model of wildfire intelligence was simple: limited maps, blunt hazard scores, fragmented data. Only the biggest utilities or federal agencies had the resources to build complex models. Everyone else operated in the dark.
Athena’s ability to provide sophisticated geospatial insights with extremely high value, relative to cost, is flips this equation. Even the smallest utility or community can now access what Peter Diamandis would call an exponential technology shift, based on an abundance of useful information. With an AI/Machine Learning model (Voice of the Acre®) that offers a nuanced perspective on fire behavior and the land, based on more than a dozen databases of raw and difficult to use data, Athena’s geospatial platform offers utilities tools that were previously almost unimaginable. The same tools that once cost millions and required elite technical teams are now easy to understand, use and are traceable to the original source.
Again, using Diamandis’ words: Athena dematerializes and demonetizes wildfire intelligence, reducing cost and complexity while increasing the resolution of the user’s understanding.
The result is an abundance of usable, operationally applicable data. By substation and line mile, utilities can now evaluate the probability that their lines will initiate a wildfire. HOAs and municipalities can see their collective vulnerability instead of arguing over individual parcels. Bond investors can quantify credit risk with the same clarity they use for interest rates.
Utilities at the Center of Change
For electric distribution and transmission companies, wildfire risk is existential. Every line mile carries not just engineering risk but financial liability. Equipment planning, vegetation management, and capital investment can no longer be driven by compliance checklists alone — they must be linked directly to probabilistic risk profiles such as the one below.
Geospatial intelligence is an exponential tool and makes this shift possible. Instead of relying on static hazard maps, utilities can integrate high-frequency, high-resolution intelligence into their operations. Vegetation management becomes dynamic, targeted to the acres that matter most. Equipment replacement is prioritized where failure would trigger maximum fire liability. Publicly owned utilities (POUs) gain not only a defense against fire but also a language to communicate their actions the improve resilience to their communities of service.
This is more than risk management. This a transformation of the existing system (AKA Disruption).
Capital Markets and the Financial Impact of Resilience
Wildfire isn’t just an operational risk; it’s a financial contagion. Creditors and bond investors are beginning to recognize that climate-driven fire risk directly affects a utility’s cost of capital. Municipal bonds, revenue bonds, and insurance pools all face volatility when wildfire exposure is hidden.
The opportunity is clear: by digitizing wildfire risk into transparent, probabilistic intelligence, utilities can earn cheaper access to capital, communities can secure resilience funding, and insurers can re-enter markets with confidence. Instead of a vicious cycle of retreat and retrenchment, we build a virtuous cycle of investment and protection.
The future of wildfire management isn’t reactive suppression; it’s proactive intelligence. Utilities, insurers, and capital markets have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to use exponential tools to build wildfire resilience at scale. The technology exists as Voice of the Acre®, geospatial intelligence is available and immediately accessible.
Bottom Line
Wildfire seasons are longer. Ignitions are more frequent. Losses are more severe. The threat is exponential. But new tools, such as Voice of the Acre®, are now at our disposal.
Humans are at a pivot point. If we remain trapped in linear thinking, wildfire will continue to destabilize our financial systems, utilities, and communities. But if we embrace a proactive approach, leveraging AI/ML, geospatial intelligence, and operationally useful data, we can not only manage wildfire risk but transform it into a foundation for resilience.
This isn’t about fighting fire with fear. It’s about leaning into the belief that wildfire resilience can scale quickly.
Better data drives better decisions. Better decisions build resilience. If wildfire risk is on your mind, explore some of our other articles.
Several thousand communities in America are served by a municipally owned or cooperative electric utility. If you are a customer of a publicly owned utility, let them know about Athena Intelligence. We’ve published here, and on Energy Central, about how our data helps utilities make smarter, faster wildfire mitigation decisions.
If you live in a HOA, wildfire risk isn’t just a personal concern — it’s a shared financial one. Whether you’re worried about your own home insurance or the community’s property coverage, we have tools that can help you lower risk, strengthen your insurance position, and safeguard property values.
We also equip community disaster managers with the intelligence they need to anticipate, plan for, and respond to wildfire threats.
Reaching every utility, HOA, and emergency manager ourselves would be like trying to “boil the ocean.” But you can help change that. You can be the person who asks your community leaders, utility managers, or HOA board to demand better data.
Another example: Athena’s maps are updated quarterly, this is based on data as of June 30, 2025 for Tuscon Electric Power Company.
Block ID Pima040190040572001Med_Dens_Interface
Conditional Flame Length Max: 8 feet Mean: 6 ft
If a wildfire is in the area, the odds of these structures being inside the perimeter of a wildfire: 1 in 4541 (0.022% or 2.2 bp)
Risk_Score: 3 (1–10)
Six_Class: Very Low
State: AZ
Wildfire Hazard Potential for the WUI block Max: 312 Mean: 230 Structural Density: Medium
Wildland Urban Interface Proximity: Interface
Athena Intelligence is a data vendor with a geospatial, conditional, profiling tool that pulls together vast amounts of disaggregated wildfire and environmental data to generate spatial intelligence, resulting in a digital fingerprint of wildfire risk.
Clients include financial services companies, insurance, electric utilities, communities and homeowners’ associations (HOAs). Athena’s geospatial intelligence is incorporated into multiple products that can be accessed through an online portal. Athena’s data is currently used in wildfire mitigation plans (WMP) and public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP), property insurance underwriting and portfolio risk optimization.
Reach out to me at Elizabeth@AthenaIntel.io and follow us here, on LinkedIn or Energy Central.
