Flood Resilience Through Water Infrastructure: Identifying Opportunities for an Early-Stage Investor

Abstract

Flooding is a growing climate risk that threatens assets, lives, and livelihoods. As climate impacts intensify, identifying scalable solutions that reduce flood related harms is becoming increasingly important, especially for investors focused on adaptation, resilience, and climate risk. Developed for Azolla Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, this master’s project examines water infrastructure as a key solution space for strengthening flood resilience. It develops an ontology that organizes solutions by their primary function in the flood water system, including managing floodwater, protecting assets, maintaining service continuity, improving sensing and operations, and supporting planning and financing decisions. It then applies an impact and prioritization framework to assess which solution areas are most promising from both resilience and investment perspectives for an early stage equity investor. To complement this analysis, the study incorporates perspectives from investors and sector experts on the opportunities and constraints within water infrastructure. It also maps startups and investors in the space to support sourcing and build an expert pipeline for the client. Together, these analyses offer a practical framework for identifying water infrastructure innovations that could strengthen flood resilience and inform future investment decisions for Azolla Ventures.