NSF ASCEND Engine Deploys Analytics Enabling Two Major Colorado Initiatives, One with National Security Significance
Fort Collins, CO, July 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The U.S. National Science Foundation’s ASCEND Engine is providing critical analytical capabilities to support two major disaster preparedness and resilience programs in Colorado. Both programs seek to improve Colorado’s ability to prepare for and respond to environmental disasters and were largely spurred by the 2021 Marshall Fire in Boulder County.
The NSF ASCEND Engine in Colorado and Wyoming, led by Innosphere, is a place-based innovation hub for the field of environmental intelligence, harnessing the unique advanced sensing and computational assets of the Front Range to create transformational decision support for pressing issues like wildfire, drought, and extreme weather. This includes providing unprecedented insight into natural hazard risk in complex terrain, an extremely challenging scientific problem with vast implications for long-term investment planning and disaster response in the region.
Decision makers in the Mountain West need trustworthy, validated tools to help navigate scenarios fraught with deep uncertainty, such as allocating scarce mitigation resources to reduce future wildfire risk. An NSF ASCEND Engine project team, led by the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is advancing physics-AI hybrid techniques that can provide ultra-high resolution, precision understanding of a wide range of hazards to guide preparedness and response investments.*
These capabilities play a foundational role in the Environmental Intelligence pillar of the first-of-its-kind Colorado Whole-of-State Homeland Defense and Resilience Framework (WOS), which the NSF ASCEND co-chairs along with the Colorado National Guard. The WOS initiative seeks to break silos across sectors to radically improve state-level resilience to major shocks.
The WOS coalition has identified water and power utilities as decisive single points of failure for statewide resilience during natural disasters, with particular emphasis on those serving U.S. mission-critical assets, including military bases. The Engine is supporting robust technical assessments of Colorado’s utility infrastructure to identify and patch the highest priority vulnerabilities impacting national security. This work has the potential to serve as a resiliency model for national defense and security across the U.S. and demonstrates the fit-for-purpose, translational power of NSF’s Regional Innovation Engines model.
Similarly, ASCEND Engine teams provide the core data and models that are being used to produce the second iteration of Colorado’s Preparedness Roadmap, a consequential activity informing a wide range of state-level planning activities and adaptation actions. The roadmap is a legislatively mandated process leveraging the best available science and data to support informed policy decisions and prioritize near-term action regarding natural hazard resilience.
The highly localized, precision insights produced from ASCEND Engine teams will be used to inform mitigation investments, uncover yet-unknown vulnerabilities and potential cascading events, like life-threatening flooding in burn scars following drought-induced wildfire. At the end of June, the NSF ASCEND Engine delivered its dataset and insights that will inform the roadmap. The roadmap will be publicly released later this year.
In its first two years, the NSF ASCEND Engine invested $15 million in environmental intelligence programs. Now in year three, it is projected to invest $45 million, including two already launched programs focused on asset resilience through intelligent digital twins (ARID) and soil health innovation, evaluation and demonstration (SHIELD). The ASCEND Engine is preparing to deploy its third program and actively taking applications for new ARID and SHIELD accelerator programs.
About the NSF ASCEND Engine:
The NSF ASCEND Engine - Advanced Sensing and Computation for Environmental Decision Making - is a U.S. National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engine led by Innosphere. Based along the I-25 Innovation Corridor, the ASCEND Engine connects Colorado and Wyoming’s federal laboratories, R1 universities, and technology companies to develop scalable solutions for wildfire, drought, extreme weather, and environmental resilience. The Engine addresses global challenges from one of the world’s most capable regional centers of excellence for environmental intelligence. Projected 10-year impact: $1.5B in regional GDP and 22,000 new jobs by 2034.
Visit innosphere.org/nsf-engine to learn more.
About Innosphere:
Innosphere is the Colorado-based nonprofit venture development organization — built for entrepreneurs turning discovery into companies. We bring acceleration, capital, infrastructure, and partners together to advance the region and enhance national competitiveness. Founded in 1998, Innosphere operates the Innosphere Accelerators, the NSF ASCEND Engine, and convenes the Colorado Innovation Council across four advanced industry sectors. In 2025, Innosphere supported 102 startups, facilitated $248M in capital raised, and supported 171 full-time jobs. Cumulative impact since 2013: 400+ companies served, 2,000+ jobs created.
Visit www.innosphere.org to learn more.
* Principal Investigators: Bart Geerts and Stefan Rahimi (UW) and Kristen Rasmussen (CSU)
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Kristen Tatti Innosphere (970) 221-1301 kristen@innosphere.org
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