Rocio Frej Vitalle began her career in aerospace engineering and government contracting, but a desire to build faster and have a more direct impact led her down a different path, one that now stands at the intersection of advanced modeling, emergency response, and climate resilience. As the founder and CEO of SkyTL, she’s built a platform that transforms how we predict, respond to, and prevent natural disasters by fusing live data from satellites, drones, sensors, and responders into usable, real-time intelligence. In this Q&A, Rocio shares how a grad school idea at the University of South Florida turned into a nationally backed company, how her technology is already saving lives and reducing liability, and what she envisions for the future of climate disaster response.

You started your career in aerospace engineering and government contracting. What inspired you to leave that world and build a startup focused on climate intelligence?

I left government contracting because I wanted to move faster and build something with immediate, tangible impact. In my federal work, I was exposed to new technologies like drones and sensors, that I saw could actually change outcomes during disasters. I saw the needs and the path, and was eager to develop the technology.

SkyTL began while you were earning your master’s at The University of South Florida (USF). What was the moment when you realized this could become a company with national impact?

While earning my master’s at USF, I was exposed to both engineering and entrepreneurship courses, and started learning about the startup ecosystem and emerging technologies. The turning point came when I realized we could fuse emerging technologies into one system, and leverage the Tampa Bay resources and startup ecosystem to convert the technology into a business.

You have said the real gap in emergency management is not the lack of data, but the lack of usable and timely intelligence. What does SkyTL do differently from other systems?

Unlike traditional tools that provide static predictions, SkyTL continuously updates simulations and risk forecasts by ingesting and standardizing live data, including suppression and mitigation efforts. This provides a dynamic and field-informed model both before and during a disaster.

SkyTL differentiates itself by making advanced physics and science models usable, interoperable, and field-ready, thereby bridging the gap between data and actionable intelligence. It integrates live data from diverse sources like satellites, drones, weather stations, robots, and IoT sensors, normalizing it into a unified framework. This ensures immediate usability in fire behavior and risk models.

Your platform combines data from satellites, drones, sensors, and people on the ground. How do you make that information usable for decision makers in the middle of a crisis?

SkyTL translates complex data and physics models into simple, actionable insights using predictive models and 3D risk maps. Decision-makers can issue evacuations, manage vegetation, or coordinate emergency resources, all without needing technical expertise.

SkyTL is built to adapt as conditions change. How does the system respond to things like vegetation growth, new construction, or a fast-moving wildfire?

SkyTL’s hybrid processing engine intelligently combines various fire modeling tools from academia, research labs, and its own internal models. This autonomous linking results in integrated forecasts that account for terrain, wind, fuel, suppression activity, and infrastructure simultaneously. This ensures that the models are fast, precise, coherent, and actionable insights in real time.

You recently launched the beta version of the platform. What early use cases or results have stood out so far in terms of real-world impact?

WindTL (SkyTL’s fire management tool) beta program has yielded significant real-world impact, demonstrating its effectiveness in fire prevention, response, and even retrospective analysis. Here are some standout early use cases and results:

• Thompson Fire (2024) – Real-time Incident Response: WindTL accurately predicted that embers would cross a river and ignite a new fire within two hours, even though traditional models suggested the fire would be contained by the river. Fire crews using WindTL were able to reposition and stop the fire before it reached a community, directly preventing potential disaster.
• Contra Costa County (2025) – Proactive Risk Mitigation & Community Education: WindTL is being used operationally in Contra Costa County to identify areas for preventive vegetation management. In the first significant fire of the season, the Sommersfield fire, WindTL outperformed the model used by CalFire. Beyond that, WindTL is also being used to educate the public about fire risk and where to apply proactive mitigation measures. This proactive engagement led to the county awarding WindTL a Challenge Coin for its exceptional contributions to emergency service.
• Tennis Club Fire (2019) – Retrospective Analysis for Liability: Six years after the fact, WindTL was used to simulate the 2019 Tennis Club Fire. It accurately forecasted a second fire resulting from an embercast of the initial ignition caused by a power line failure. This simulation provided crucial evidence in a long-standing case, demonstrating WindTL’s ability to reconstruct historical fire events and inform liability.
• Camp Fire (2018) – Validation for Utility Risk Management: WindTL accurately simulated the 2018 Camp Fire, showing how winds accelerated through the terrain and exceeded the limit for preventive power shutoffs precisely at the point of ignition. It also accurately forecasted the rapid propagation into populated areas. This validated WindTL as a science-based tool for utility companies to make preemptive shutoff decisions, reducing liability and maintaining service reliability.

You have received funding and support from NASA, NOAA, and the U.S. Air Force. How have those partnerships helped shape your product and your growth strategy?

Support from these agencies provided critical non-dilutive funding and technical guidance to develop and validate SkyTL’s core technologies. Their backing also lent credibility and opened doors to long-term contracts and collaborations with cities and utilities nationwide. The funding and guidance allowed us to build the platform through a 2-year pilot program with technical experts, researchers, and emergency responders, incorporating continuous feedback to ensure it meets real-world operational needs and is practical and trusted.

What made you choose to build SkyTL in Tampa, and how has the local ecosystem supported you?

Tampa offered both academic resources at USF and an emerging tech ecosystem. Local accelerators like Tampa Bay Wave and Embarc Collective gave me the support to grow SkyTL from an idea into a nationally-backed platform.

Your mission is to make disaster intelligence more accessible. What does it look like when everyday citizens or small towns are empowered with the kind of tools SkyTL offers?

Our goal is to democratize access to advanced fire science, making it available to rural communities and underserved municipalities, not just large utilities or insurance companies. This means small towns can issue accurate evacuation orders or identify risk without needing a dedicated data science team. Instead of broad, potentially unnecessary evacuation orders that cause panic and disruption, residents receive targeted and timely alerts via SMS. They have access to accurate forecasts of disaster, allowing them to make confident decisions about when and where to evacuate safely, reducing mass evacuations and preventing loss of life.

Emergency responders and land owners can also use WindTL to understand where to apply proactive mitigation measures in their own neighborhoods. This builds long-term trust in emergency services, and lowers insurance premiums.

Looking ahead, what is your vision for how disaster response should evolve in the next five years with platforms like SkyTL leading the way?

The future of disaster response is proactive, data-driven, and democratized. We envision a world where every community has access to real-time intelligence that can prevent catastrophes.Our goal is to provide every community, including those with limited resources, with easy access to real-time disaster alerts, spread forecasts, risk management tools, and suppression modeling through a low-cost, user-friendly web platform that requires no specialized training. This allows them to make more precise, data-driven decisions during an active fire, including effectively deploying resources. We cannot avoid the next natural disaster, but with the right tools, it doesn’t need to become a catastrophe. Tools like SkyTL shift the paradigm towards proactive mitigation and response that avoid catastrophic outcomes, and eventually lead to more equitable insurance premiums.

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