Geoff Towne

About Geoff Towne

While working on my Masters thesis, I used remote sensing and spectral analysis to investigate the correlation of antecedent winter precipitation and subsequent summer fire seasons. I was proud of that work, until a month after I graduated, when the Yarnell Hill happened. On June 30th, 2013, the Yarnell Hill fire took the lives of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots from Prescott, AZ. My work seemed completely useless, and I felt as if I let down those firefighters and their families. Intellectually, that was not true, but emotionally, I will always wonder if I could have provided some more useful data that could have changed the approach to that fire.After the Yarnell Hill tragedy, I changed course in my career and focused solely on working for gas and electric utilities as a GIS tech and analyst. I then moved over to the design side of electric distribution. Later, as a consultant for utilities across the US, I learned that wildfire mitigation remains a major concern for utilities and for any entities in the Wildland-Urban Interface. This is when I realized that I had unfinished work to do, and this is how Raster Report was born. With our unique multispectral analysis, we identify elevated fired danger in precise locations throughout the year. Not once or twice a year, all year long. Where we are most effective though is when our results are utilized in conjunction with other mitigative methods. When millions of vegetation encroachments are identified from LiDAR, high resolution imagery, models, etc, Raster Report identifies specific locations of highest fire danger. These results then inform Work, Vegetation and Asset Management systems, so resources can be allocated more efficiently, saving lives and operating costs.

Experience

1. Co-founder and CTO, Raster Report

   Raster Report

   Apr 2022 — Present · Tucson, AZ, US

   Remote sensing based geoanalytics to provide informed allocation of resources in wildland fire mitigation for utilities and other entities near theWildland-Urban Interface.

Education

• University of Arizona

  M.A., Geography

  2010 — 2013