JD Durkin: David Babson joins us now, EVP of Energy, Climate & Nature at XPRIZE. He and his team just rang the Closing Bell. I’ve got to start there. What’s the experience like for you to do that? That’s a lot of people’s dream come true.
David Babson: It was very cool. Yeah, it was exciting, and it was great for the teams to be there as well. So it was a great experience.
JD Durkin: So let’s talk about those teams. Let’s talk about this huge competition that you have. For anyone a bit unfamiliar, what is it all about, and how are you going about selecting potential winners out of those competitors?
David Babson: So this competition was about surfacing necessary technologies for a future where we’re going to have a lot more wildfires, and the technologies to stop wildfires before they become very destructive, very expensive wildfires.
So we wanted to develop technologies that can identify a nascent wildfire before it becomes destructive and send a drone or an autonomous vehicle there to put out that wildfire before it spreads.
JD Durkin: I believe you did it in Australia, if I’m not mistaken. Is that right?
David Babson: There were two parts to the competition, actually. The portion where we were testing in Australia was a track in the competition that looked at using satellite intelligence to identify wildfires, and that portion was done in Australia.
The portion of the competition that was evaluating the autonomous systems was tested in Alaska.
JD Durkin: Tell me about these teams, these competitors. Are they tech professionals? Are they scientists? Are they enthusiasts about the good work that you’re seeking to do?
David Babson: A little bit of a mix of all of the above. Like all of the XPRIZEs, it’s a combination of all of them, and the competition itself is what brings them together.
Folks that are entrepreneurial and want to start new companies partner with academics and scientists to translate technologies that make something possible into, you know, companies and technologies that can scale.
JD Durkin: You know, David, here in New York City this last summer, we were reminded of just how potent, how powerful wildfires, not even here in the U.S., can be, as millions of Americans are kind of contending with this now as an annual reality.
What does the very near-term future look like, using drones, artificial intelligence, cutting-edge technology to actually try and get ahead of these challenges?
David Babson: It is looking like we are going to have better capacities than ever in the future to tackle wildfires more quickly and to prevent them from becoming destructive and very, very expensive.
And it’s important that we do that because, because of global climate change, wildfires have, you know, moved from being a regional, seasonal challenge to being a global, continuous challenge. Even in New York, you’re, you know, facing these sorts of things.
And so having the technologies that can respond at scale quickly around the world is incredibly important.
JD Durkin: What an important time to be having these conversations and to do the work that you and your colleagues are doing. David Babson, EVP of Energy, Climate & Nature at XPRIZE. Congrats on ringing the bell. More importantly, congrats on the work you’re doing. Thanks a lot for joining us.
David Babson: Thank you.
