Responsible Innovation Toolkit
Innovator Readiness
Are you building technology for disaster resilience? This assessment maps where your solution sits across ten readiness dimensions — from trust-based partnerships and operational fit to governance, equity, and procurement viability. Fifty operational and impact indicators produce a readiness baseline that agencies, funders, and innovation pipelines can evaluate alongside your technical readiness. Scores are weighted by evidence quality: independently verified claims carry more weight than self-reported ones. The assessment is not a gate — it is a compass. A gap on any dimension points to where the next improvement lies, and the solutions that advance furthest along the readiness path become lighthouses for the field.
Agency Readiness
Is your agency well positioned to pilot, procure, and adopt new technology and FireTech innovation? This assessment helps fire agencies, utilities, and land managers evaluate their readiness to integrate new technology — not just the vendor's readiness to sell it. Fifteen indicators across the 10 RFTF pillars surface the institutional conditions that determine whether a pilot succeeds or stalls: staffing capacity, IT infrastructure, procurement pathways, data governance frameworks, community relationships, and outcome measurement capability. Completing the assessment before evaluating vendors gives your agency a clear picture of its own absorption capacity — and identifies what needs to be in place before the technology arrives.
Community Readiness
Is the technology being deployed in your community designed with you, or for you? This assessment gives communities, tribal authorities, neighborhood organizations, and local stakeholders a structured way to evaluate wildfire technology from their perspective. Thirty-seven dual-rated questions ask both how important each readiness dimension is to your community and how well your experience matches. The gap between importance and experience is where the conversation needs to happen. Designed privacy-first with no data submission required, the instrument is built for communities that have been treated as recipients of technology rather than partners in its design — and for those determined to change that.
Funder Readiness
This assessment helps philanthropic funders, venture investors, impact funds, insurers, corporate capital providers, and public funders evaluate whether their wildfire and resilience investments are structured for responsible outcomes — not just technical milestones. Twenty-eight dual-column questions assess both due diligence practices and capital terms across the ten RFTF pillars. The instrument surfaces whether your funding requires community partnership, data sovereignty, equity provisions, and outcome measurement — or whether your capital reaches innovators without the conditions that make deployment responsible. Completing it before writing the next check changes what you ask for.
Ecosystem Readiness
This assessment is for research institutions, advisory firms, accelerators, conveners, technical assistance providers, and network organizations that support the wildfire technology landscape without building or deploying technology themselves. It evaluates whether your programs, convenings, research outputs, and advisory services advance responsible innovation across the ten readiness dimensions — including whether community and agency voices shape your work, whether your data practices meet sovereignty standards, and whether your contributions reach under-resourced actors or only well-connected ones. The strongest ecosystem partners are those willing to assess their own role with the same rigor they apply to others.
Interested in piloting?
Begin by taking a snapshot assessment here and contact shefali@lakhina.com for in-depth stakeholder assessments and cross walk analysis.
FAQs
What is the Responsible FireTech Framework (RFTF)?
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The Responsible FireTech Framework (RFTF) guides a technology’s operational and impact readiness for the communities, agencies, and systems it's built to serve. The RFTF was created with the recognition that Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) are not a good predictor of deployment success. A technology can achieve TRL 7 and still fail in real world deployments. The RFTF’s 10 pillars provide guidance on trust-based partnerships, operational fit, real-world validation, interoperability, ecological integrity, governance and data, equity and access, procurement and workforce, monitoring and evaluation, and system-wide learning. The framework guides innovators, end users, and system partners on how to progress beyond demo environments and sustain operational and impact readiness in real world scenarios.
Who are these assessments for?
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Wonder Labs is operationalizing guidance from the RFTF by giving free and open access to five assessment instruments, one for each stakeholder group: innovators developing technology, agencies adopting it, communities relying on it, funders backing it, and ecosystem partners supporting implementation. Each instrument uses the same ten underlying pillars but asks each stakeholder questions that match their role. You complete the instrument designed for your position in the ecosystem.
The RFTF's lasting value comes from comparing assessments across stakeholder types for the same deployment. When an innovator, an agency partner, a community organization, and a funder each independently assess the same technology deployment, the divergences between their responses reveal where the real barriers to adoption sit.
Contact Wonder Labs for support if you need a facilitated cross-walk of multiple partner assessments, in-depth analysis, and recommended next steps. Email: shefali@lakhina.com
What happens to my responses?
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The instruments are designed for privacy-first and work entirely offline. You can download the HTML, complete the assessment for your internal use, save your responses locally or print to PDF, and share with relevant partners or funders at your convenience. If you choose to contribute your responses to Wonder Labs for cross-instrument analysis or for inclusion in the State of FireTech annual report, feel free to email a PDF of your responses and we’ll contact you with next steps. This privacy-first design serves sensitive audiences including tribal authorities, defense-adjacent organizations, and pre-announcement startups. The instruments are designed to encourage accountability to relevant partners and constant systems improvement across the 10 pillars of Responsible FireTech Innovation.
Do I have to complete every section/ question?
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Each instrument includes core indicators (scored) and depth indicators (qualitative). Core indicators cover the essential readiness dimensions and can be completed in a shorter session. Depth indicators provide richer diagnostic detail for organizations ready to go further. Complete what is useful to you. A partially completed assessment with honest answers is more valuable to you and your partners than a fully completed one with guesswork or inflated claims.
A note on interpreting scoring. The RFTF uses a lighthouse model: responsible innovation is a path, not a pass mark. A low score identifies where the next improvement lies — it is not a mark against you. No score disqualifies an organization, it pinpoints your next area for evolution.
The assessment is designed to be repeated as your organization progresses along the readiness path. Your initial completion establishes a baseline. Subsequent completions — after a pilot, after a procurement cycle, after a community engagement process — track your movement along each pillar. Over time, the trajectory matters more than any single score.
Who developed the RFTF and how is it being used to advance responsible innovation for disaster resilience?
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The Responsible FireTech Framework was developed by Wonder Labs, a California-based social enterprise focused on catalyzing innovations for disaster resilience. Released in December 2025, the RFTF’s intellectual foundations draw on decades of innovation thinking and disaster resilience programming across continents. The RFTF and five-part instrument is aligned with the UN Early Warnings for All initiative, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the Sustainable Development Goals.
In early-2026, the RFTF guidance and Innovator Readiness Assessment was adopted by XPRIZE Wildfire teams (Track A and Track B). In 2026-2027, the RFTF will guide the World Economic Forum's Global Wildfire Leadership Network Solutions Labs.
Have you adopted the RFTF guidance and completed the self-assessment? Share your story to inspire others on the path to responsible innovation for disaster resilience.