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Update

Celebrating 2021 and looking ahead to 2022

2021 was a year of immense progress for Upstream Tech: Lens now powers the monitoring and reporting for over 100 organizations monitoring 13+ million acres. HydroForecast was awarded a pivotal DOE grant and swept a forecasting competition (we can now say it is the most accurate operational forecasting system).

Jan 13, 2022
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In my dreams I usually find myself outdoors - in a field of tall grass, on the edge of a seaside cliff, wandering a forest. Of course, I’m warm in my house, but the mind’s ability to accurately recreate natural spaces is amazing. 

“Uh oh, Marsh has lost it” you might be thinking. Yet our work at Upstream Tech endeavors to do something similar: to digitally approximate and simulate natural spaces and physical processes, and to put these digital microcosms into the hands of experts like you. It’s this very different, more grounded take on “the metaverse” (hah!) that makes our work meaningful and intriguing.

2021 was a year of immense progress for Upstream Tech: Lens now powers the monitoring and reporting for over 100 organizations monitoring 13+ million acres. HydroForecast was awarded a pivotal DOE grant and swept a forecasting competition (we can now say it is the most accurate operational forecasting system). We also doubled the number of HydroForecast customers, with a combined size of forecasted watersheds greater than the area of Germany.  

We added Allegra, Eve, Jake, Maya, Sijae and Matt to the team, and Peter Stein, Paul Fleming, Katherine Birnie and Rand Wentworth as advisors. The team was also able to safely meet for a retreat in Colorado, with many members meeting one another for the first time!

It takes a strong dose of brevity to condense all of the hard work, technological breakthroughs, and new relationships we made in 2021 to a few sentences. To sum it up further: we’ve created the foundation for Lens and HydroForecast to have a breakout year in 2022, with Lens enabling new kinds of monitoring for more organizations and HydroForecast changing how the world uses water and weather data to make decisions.

Amidst the growth and successes, we also witnessed sobering natural events that were calls-to-action for the team. From the floods in British Columbia to the climate prediction that the Sierra Nevada snowpack may disappear in mere decades, these events and others have shaped what has become the theme of 2022 for our team - to expand application of Lens and HydroForecast to new climate, conservation and environmental challenges.

I’d love to hear from you about what your year ahead holds. Get in touch if:

  • You know someone who might be a fit for our team (we are growing!)
  • You’re interested in getting involved in climate tech
  • You know of an organization with monitoring challenges or exposure to water risk
  • You think satellites and ML are cool technologies and you just want to nerd out!

I’m grateful for this work, my team, and for you - happy 2022!

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