Retractable walls that prevent flooding have always sounded like an exciting idea.
It’s time to see them in action.
Smart Walls has been chosen by the state of Virginia to participate in the RISE Coastal Community Resilience Challenge.
The annual program supports projects aimed at helping coastal communities adapt to sea level rise and flooding. Virginia will provide a $250,000 grant to support Smart Walls as it conducts a real-world pilot, fine tunes its business model and prepares for market launch.
The program offers "business mentors, opportunities to interact with stakeholders of different projects and potential customers," said Jorge Cueto, who founded Smart Walls after he came to the University at Buffalo in 2011 on a Fulbright Scholarship.
Cueto ran a consulting and construction company in his native Colombia before coming to UB. He has pursued the promise of his retractable wall technology for years, scoring federal grants and national awards along the way. Smart Walls proposes to solve a looming problem, but before it is commercializes, it needs to be tested in a real-world environment.
Cueto told Business First just before the Covid-19 pandemic swept in that he was hoping to establish a pilot project on one of the lakes near Buffalo. That never came to fruition, but the RISE program gives his company a new champion and a high-profile chance to prove Smart Walls’ promise. He says that eventually, everyone from individual property owners to municipalities are potential customers.
Smart Walls was among six winners for this RISE cohort, chosen from more than 100 applicants.
"This is the exact next step that we needed to take," he said. "They're not just giving us the money and a problem. They're going to help us grow so that we can help them solve their challenge."
