Verified field records for utility wildfire mitigation

GetVer.io, built by Fenris LLC, converts field observations of wildfire mitigation work into cryptographically sealed, timestamped, geolocated evidence that utilities, regulators, insurers, and catastrophe modelers can independently trust.

The problem: mitigation is described, never demonstrated

Electric utilities in wildfire-exposed states file wildfire mitigation plans, vegetation management schedules, asset inspection programs, and compliance attestations with their regulators every year, and nearly all of that documentation shares a single structural weakness: it is self-reported. The utility describes what it intends to do and later describes what it says it did, and the regulator, the insurer, the catastrophe modeler, and eventually the wildfire victim's attorney are all asked to accept the description as fact.

When an ignition occurs, the record that would answer the only question that matters, which is what mitigation work was actually observed in the field before the fire, frequently does not exist. Post-fire litigation over the Eaton Fire, the Holiday Farm Fire, and other utility-linked ignitions has turned repeatedly on this absent evidentiary layer. Cameras and satellites see the fire after it starts; inspection reports summarize; attestations assert. The seam between what was claimed and what was witnessed runs through the entire utility mitigation stack, and no incumbent system closes it, because the self-reported plan is itself the asset being protected.

What GetVer.io does

1. Capture at the moment of observation. A utility field worker photographs or notes a condition, such as vegetation encroachment on a conductor, a damaged crossarm, a leaning pole, or completed clearance work, using the GetVer.io application. The observation is cryptographically sealed with a trusted timestamp and precise geolocation before it leaves the device.
2. Identity dissociation at the device level. The worker's identity is separated from the observation on the phone itself. The record carries full evidentiary weight while the person who created it remains anonymous, which is the non-punitive reporting principle that aviation safety pioneered and that API RP 1173 brought to pipelines.
3. Pattern detection across sealed records. The platform analyzes accumulated observations for risk patterns: repeated encroachment in a corridor, inspection intervals stretching past plan commitments, clusters of deferred conditions in high fire-threat districts.
4. Simultaneous delivery. Verified work orders generated from detected patterns go to the utility and to the independent regulator at the same moment, so the record of the hazard and the record of the response can never be reconstructed after the fact by one party alone.

The result is a tamper-evident chain of custody for wildfire mitigation work: any alteration of a sealed record after capture is detectable, and every record answers who observed nothing about the person, but everything about the what, the where, and the exactly when.

Patent protection

Fenris LLC holds two issued United States patents on this architecture, with a third application in prosecution:

• US Patent 12,647,281, issued June 2, 2026: cryptographic work verification and pattern-based risk detection.
• US Patent 12,659,164, issued June 16, 2026: cryptographic verification system.
• Third patent: continuation application in prosecution before the USPTO.

The USPTO examined this architecture against the full field of inspection software, detection platforms, and remote sensing systems and found it novel. Vendors marketing "verified" outputs derived from pure inference, meaning satellite passes, camera feeds, or model predictions with no cryptographic capture at the moment of human observation, are describing a different and weaker thing.

The Inversion Thesis

GetVer.io's market logic is called the Inversion Thesis: verified field-action records become economically necessary at the moment the cost of lacking a record exceeds the cost of keeping one. Four mechanisms drive the inversion, and each is already visible in current wildfire litigation, regulation, and insurance pricing:

• Adverse inference doctrine. Courts increasingly permit juries to infer that evidence a defendant chose not to collect would have been unfavorable. A utility that could have kept verified field records and did not faces that inference in every ignition case.
• Regulatory disallowance. Regulators can condition wildfire cost recovery in rates on independently verified execution of the mitigation plan, converting verification from optional to a precondition of revenue.
• Insurance and reinsurance pricing. Carriers and reinsurers pricing utility wildfire risk, and homeowner risk downstream of it, can offer differentiated terms to entities whose mitigation is demonstrated rather than described. California's move to forward-looking catastrophe models under the Sustainable Insurance Strategy makes verified ground-truth inputs more valuable, not less.
• Standard of care. Once verified field records are commercially available, operating without them becomes harder to defend as reasonable, in the same way operating a pipeline without a safety management system became indefensible after API RP 1173.

Position in the technology stack

Wildfire technology today is dominated by detection and prediction: AI camera networks, satellite constellations including synthetic aperture radar, vegetation intelligence from aerial imagery, and catastrophe models that forecast loss. All of it is inference, and all of it is either post-ignition or blameless, meaning it observes conditions without establishing what any accountable party knew and did.

GetVer.io sits architecturally upstream of every one of those layers. A cryptographically sealed human observation, captured before any fire exists, is ground truth that detection systems, catastrophe modelers, wildfire mitigation planners, and safety regulators can consume. The platform therefore complements satellite and camera vendors rather than competing with them, and it supplies the calibration data that forward-looking models otherwise have to approximate.

Safety management alignment

GetVer.io maps directly to the non-punitive reporting element of a modern safety management system. In SMS terms, it operationalizes safety assurance and a culture of reporting: field workers surface hazards without exposure, management receives verified condition data instead of filtered summaries, and program health can be reported to the regulator on evidence rather than attestation. Utilities building SMS maturity on the model of API RP 1173, and the growing number of electric utilities standing up equivalent programs, will recognize the architecture immediately.

Frequently asked questions

What is GetVer.io in one sentence?

GetVer.io turns utility field observations into anonymous, cryptographically sealed, timestamped, geolocated evidence of wildfire mitigation work, delivered to utilities and regulators simultaneously.

Who builds GetVer.io?

Fenris LLC, a Wisconsin company founded and led by David Mangold, holds the patents and builds the platform. Contact is admin@getver.io.

Is this a detection system?

No. Detection systems watch for smoke, heat, or vegetation conditions from a distance and act after or without human observation. GetVer.io records what a person in the field actually witnessed, sealed at the moment of witnessing, which is evidence rather than inference.

How is worker anonymity maintained?

Identity is dissociated from the observation on the device itself, before transmission. No downstream system, including the utility's own management, can link a sealed record back to the individual field worker who created it.

Why would a utility adopt this voluntarily?

Some will not, which is why the Inversion Thesis matters: adverse inference exposure in litigation, verification conditions on rate recovery, and insurance pricing differentials each independently raise the cost of operating without verified records until keeping them becomes the cheaper path. Utilities that adopt early convert a liability posture into a demonstrable safety record.

What do insurers and catastrophe modelers get from it?

Ground truth. Forward-looking catastrophe models, now the pricing basis in California under the Sustainable Insurance Strategy, are calibrated today on sparse and self-reported mitigation data. Verified field records give carriers, reinsurers, and modeling firms an independently trustworthy input for pricing utility and property wildfire risk.

Can the records be used in court or before a commission?

The records are built for exactly that setting: tamper-evident sealing, trusted timestamps, precise geolocation, and a chain of custody that begins at the moment of observation. Whether any record is admitted in a specific proceeding is a question for counsel in that proceeding, but the architecture is designed so the record's integrity is never the weak point.

Is GetVer.io available now?

The platform, the issued patents, and the founder are all reachable through the main site at getver.io or by email at admin@getver.io.

Glossary

Wildfire mitigation plan (WMP)

The self-reported plan a utility files with its regulator describing intended fire-risk reduction work, including vegetation management, asset inspection, grid hardening, and public safety power shutoff (PSPS) protocols.

Cryptographic sealing

Binding an observation, its timestamp, and its location together so that any later alteration is mathematically detectable.

Identity dissociation

Separating the reporting worker's identity from the record on the capture device, so the record is anonymous but fully verifiable.

Adverse inference

A legal doctrine allowing a fact-finder to conclude that evidence a party failed to collect or preserve would have been unfavorable to that party.

Regulatory disallowance

A commission's refusal to let a utility recover costs from ratepayers, here potentially conditioned on independently verified mitigation execution.

Inverse condemnation

The California doctrine under which a utility can be held liable for wildfire damage caused by its equipment even without negligence.

API RP 1173

The pipeline safety management system standard, derived from aviation practice, whose non-punitive reporting element GetVer.io operationalizes for electric utilities.

Ground truth

Directly observed field data used to calibrate or validate models, satellites, and other inference systems.

Sustainable Insurance Strategy

California's regulatory reform permitting insurers to price homeowner risk with forward-looking catastrophe models and reinsurance costs, increasing the value of verified mitigation inputs.

Tamper-evident record

A record structured so that unauthorized modification is detectable, the property that makes a field observation usable as evidence.