Ladris / About
About Ladris

When disaster comes, you can stay,
or you can move out of the way.

Moving out of harm's way is called evacuating. It is both a general solution to nearly every catastrophe and a deceptively complex problem. Ladris exists to solve this.

How we answer it

Every evacuation comes down to two clocks.

/ Clock one

Time to impact

How long before the disaster reaches me?

Answered by our disaster models: wildfire spread, flooding, and more, coupled to real terrain, weather, and live sensor feeds.

/ Clock two

Time to clear

How long will it take to get everyone out?

Answered by our evacuation model: road networks, population, traffic, and human behavior.

Evacuation modeling, explained

What is evacuation modeling?

What is evacuation modeling?

Evacuation modeling is the practice of simulating how long it takes to move a population out of a hazard's path. It couples a hazard model — how fast a wildfire, flood, or other threat spreads — with a traffic-and-behavior model of the road network, population, and how people actually respond, producing a clearance time and the choke points that drive it. Applied to wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and other threats, this is often called disaster evacuation modeling — the discipline Ladris was built around.

What is clearance time?

Clearance time is the total time required to move everyone out of a defined evacuation zone to safety. It is the single most important number in an evacuation plan: if clearance time is longer than the time until the hazard arrives, the plan fails. Ladris computes it against your real road network, population, and time-of-day conditions.

How do agencies plan an evacuation?

Agencies define evacuation zones, estimate the people and vehicles in each, model the hazard that threatens them, then simulate the evacuation across the road network to find clearance times, bottlenecks, and the order in which zones should leave. Ladris runs these simulations in seconds, so planners can test many scenarios instead of one.

What hazards can be modeled?

Wildfire, flood, hurricane, tsunami, storm surge, hazmat releases, and nuclear incidents — any threat that requires moving people. Ladris couples each hazard model to the same evacuation engine, so one plan can cover every hazard a community faces.

How is Ladris evacuation modeling different?

Traditional evacuation studies take weeks and produce a single static estimate. Ladris evacuation modeling runs in seconds and updates automatically as conditions change, letting agencies test hundreds of scenarios ahead of time and run live during an incident.

Leadership

Government depth. Scientific depth.

A focused executive team paired with one of the deepest benches in disaster technology. The full team spans 25+ people across operations, law, fire, government, science and academia.

Leo Zlimen
Leo Zlimen
Chief Executive Officer
Founder. Has led Ladris since inception.
Shane Lauderdale
Shane Lauderdale
VP, Forward Deployed Ops
39+ years. Type 1 Ops Section Chief on Camp, Thomas, Kincade.
John Messina
John Messina
Senior Forward Deployed Liaison
30+ years. Former CAL FIRE Assistant Region Chief; Type 1 IC on the Camp Fire.
Tom Cova
Tom Cova, PhD
Scientific Advisory · Univ. of Utah
A foundational voice in wildfire-evacuation modeling.
Janice Coen
Janice Coen, PhD
Scientific Advisory · NCAR
Developer of the CAWFE coupled atmosphere–fire model.
Vidhu Shekhar
Vidhu Shekhar
Government Advisory · Caltrans
Chief Data & AI Officer at California's transportation agency.

The full roster (Executive, Forward Deployed Ops, Scientific Advisory, and Government Advisory), plus two new product boards we're standing up for Prime and Core in 2026.

Full leadership →
2019
Founded in Nevada City, California
25+
Leaders & advisors across exec, ops, science, and government
80+
Agencies using Ladris in production
100%
Decisions on the platform are audit-logged for after-action review
Get in touch

Bring Ladris to your jurisdiction.

Whether you're a county OES, a state agency, a fire district, or a sheriff's office, let's talk about what disaster intelligence looks like for your community.

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