Florida Innovation Tackles Global Flood Risk

HighTide Intelligence of Polk County

When Adrian Santiago Tate left Stanford University in 2020 to launch a flood risk technology company, the journey back to Florida was anything but smooth. His aging Subaru broke down multiple times during a cross-country drive in the early days of the pandemic, and he arrived at his mother’s home with little more than an ambitious vision and determination to make it work.

Today, that vision has become HighTide, a Florida-based flood risk data company helping communities, governments and organizations better understand and prepare for rising flood threats. Founded by Adrian Santiago Tate and Noah Dewar, HighTide combines advanced geospatial technology and data science to help decision-makers manage flood risk. The company’s mission is straightforward but significant. “Our mission is to accelerate flood adaptation with data-driven technology,” Dewar said.

The company was born from a desire to help communities confront one of the world’s most pressing challenges. “Flooding is one of the biggest problems that the world will face in the coming decades,” Santiago Tate said. “Millions of people around the world are going to have to grapple with that and make tough decisions. We’re trying to make the data that they need to make those decisions readily available so that they can not lose everything to a flood.”

The company’s commitment to public access led to the development of Arkly, a platform that makes flood-related data available online at no cost.

For Dewar, solving complex challenges is what drives the business. “I just really love to solve hard problems, and flooding at scale is one of the hardest problems there is,” he said. “We don’t just want to solve a problem and make money. We want to do something that matters.”

As the company began exploring growth opportunities, the founders turned to the Florida SBDC at USF for guidance, where they connected with International Trade Specialist, Selma Canas.

“We reached out to Florida SBDC at USF at first to get help with procurement in other markets, which is the main question mark that I had,” Santiago Tate said. “Then beyond that, we learned about the grant that was available for businesses to begin exploring exporting and also received the export marketing plan, which gave us some pretty insightful information about the market that we were interested in.”

Through assistance from the Florida SBDC at USF and support from the State Trade Expansion Program, or STEP grant, HighTide began laying the groundwork for international expansion.

Santiago Tate used the STEP grant to travel to Bogotá, Colombia, where he presented at the AmeriGeo conference and connected with government officials, academics and infrastructure professionals from across South America. “Thanks to this grant, we started that process, and we’ve connected with a lot of folks, and we’re well underway,” he said.

The international focus aligns closely with the company’s mission. While Florida remains HighTide’s largest market, the founders see opportunities to address flood-related challenges in regions where communities often lack access to sophisticated planning tools.

“South America has a huge number of people who are exposed to flooding, and they don’t necessarily have the resources to develop solutions for this themselves,” Dewar said. “We’re able to do this because we are mission-driven.”

The founders credit Florida as an ideal proving ground for their technology.

“Florida is the place where we’re dealing with a lot of these issues for the first time,” Santiago Tate said. “We’ve been on the ground through that process from early on and have built our software around making that entire process very scalable, so we can then take it to Georgia, to South Carolina, we can take it to Colombia. Really, anywhere in the world could benefit from the problems that we’re solving here in Florida.”

The company’s growth has already produced significant milestones. HighTide is currently working for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to modernize how the state manages critical environmental asset data.

“It’s contracting with the state to help them clean up and really bring into the twenty-first century the process of managing critical asset data in Florida,” Dewar said.

The company is also collaborating with researchers at Stanford University on a project funded through the university’s Sustainability Accelerator that examines how satellite-derived land movement data can be integrated into flood risk management workflows.

Reflecting on the support he received, Santiago Tate says one of the greatest benefits of working with the Florida SBDC at USF was access to knowledgeable consultants.

“I honestly felt that I had just left Stanford. I know everything,” Santiago Tate said with a laugh. “Then all of a sudden I’m very lost. I actually don’t know anything about government procurement. Knowing that there’s a resource there where there are people that actually really know their stuff, and that all the advice I’ve gotten so far has been on point, that’s extremely helpful.”

For entrepreneurs considering seeking assistance, both founders have a simple message. “It’s a great resource that should be utilized,” Santiago Tate said.

“When you’re starting something, you can very quickly get lost,” Dewar said. “The Florida SBDC at USF is very good for this because there are people who can answer your questions, but they can also help you understand what questions you should be asking.”

For HighTide, those answers have helped transform a startup born during a global pandemic into a growing Florida company with ambitions that reach far beyond state lines.