I-Corps alumni startup AreaHub has taken a major step in their mission to inform businesses and individuals with environmental risk intelligence. In the fall of 2024, the startup paired its services with a major new client, the Municipal Housing Authority of the City of Yonkers (MHACY).
The NOAA reported that the United States’ extreme weather and natural hazard events (those involving $1 billion or more) during 2024 incurred aggregate losses of $182 billion — roughly double the 2023 aggregate loss of $92.9 billion.
As natural catastrophe losses rise, it has become more important than ever for businesses and individuals to understand and assess their area. AreaHub provides those insights, improving businesses’ climate and environmental health assessments to help clients like the City of Yonkers mitigate risk.
“AreaHub helps clients be informed, to make healthier and wiser decisions,” said Alison Gregory, co-founder and CEO of AreaHub. “It provides insights into climate and extreme weather event risks, as well as various pollution, infrastructure, industrial, demographic, and other types of information. Expanding perspective and giving credibly sourced, science-based information enables clients to understand their areas to make better decisions.”
With the price of insurance trending up, more liability is falling on businesses, individuals, or communities such as MHACY, putting millions of homes at risk.
“AreaHub can offer businesses and municipal housing authorities clear and critical environmental data and other information, including alerts, (e.g., hazardous material warnings) to help prepare for extreme weather or other events,” said Gregory.
To maximize the AreaHub impact, Gregory completed an I-Corps regional course in 2019, strengthening the AreaHub business model. When asked about the I-Corps program and the customer discovery process, Gregory drew parallels between the new MHACY client and what she learned in the I-Corps program.
“I-Corps was very valuable, because our starting presumption was that one of our best fits would be in the real estate transaction space (multiple listing services and real estate agents),” said Gregory. “In doing customer discovery, we realized that there were better product-market fit opportunities out there, and so it helped us pivot our business development pursuit as well as our product development. In some ways that positioned us better for more receptive markets.”
The Municipal Housing Authority of Yonkers is the largest provider of affordable housing in that city, committed to redeveloping and managing housing for the community.
“The program with AreaHub provides the data and visualizing tools to enable us to make more informed decisions,” said Wilson Kimball, President and CEO of MHACY.
With insights from AreaHub, clients proactively manage risk, mitigate hazard impacts, and incorporate environmental analysis into their strategy. Planning for the constraints of climate factors on finances and operations allows businesses to strategically navigate inevitable environmental impact.
By doing this, AreaHub helps clients protect property investments, reduce insurance costs, mitigate operational disruptions, and improve stakeholders’ confidence.
Instead of focusing on a subset of climate issues, AreaHub provides analysis on a broad range of climate issues and insights, along with how infrastructure resiliency or pollution can affect decisions and people, as well as buildings and businesses. AreaHub is making a real-world impact, providing the opportunity to make better decisions and more informed investments.
Damage from environmental factors is just one of the problems businesses face, with rising insurance costs and coverage challenges becoming a recurring issue for businesses creating a difficult environmental risk picture. AreaHub clarifies and assesses these risks, reducing uncertainty to help clients understand and manage their risks to minimize losses.