Portfolio risk screening

There’s a lot of good science out there to help individuals, corporations and governments make their critical assets safer and more resilient to floods, natural hazards, and climate change impacts. Most asset owners don’t even use the science that’s available to determine if risk mitigation investments are cost-beneficial.

Property-level risk assessment

The second step in this process is to order and review in-depth, RiskFootprint™ Reports for buildings at highest risk (and neighborhood and supply route impacts). These site-specific reports will include quantitative, threat probabilities, inundation depths and other important analytics (e.g., visualizing areas of the property/building most at risk). This analysis is performed at a high level of granularity.

Damage/Loss Calculations

Determining the cost of risk mitigation for any particular property is not difficult. Architects and engineering or other specialized vendors can provide this information. But, in order to determine the cost-benefit of risk mitigation investments, an owner needs to understand the “benefit”. What is being gained from the risk mitigation investment and, is it worth the cost? Can the potential damage simply be covered by insurance? Coastal Risk’s technology provides estimates of “avoidable” damage and loss from floods and natural hazard events for the owner to determine the ROI of the protective investment.

Risk mitigation cost estimation

Step Four entails an evaluation, at the concept level, of cost-effective, risk mitigation (adaptation) options that may be available to reduce the risk and vulnerability to specific assets, also taking the asset’s criticality into account. Step 4 typically involves engaging specialized experts who can help the client match the risks identified in Steps 1- 3 with remedies that are relevant and available.

Instead of just providing clients with the “bad news” and leaving them hanging when they ask, “what do we do next”? Coastal Risk will deploy its ecosystem of experts to assist the client accelerate its resilience. Step Four generally identifies applications that will mitigate some or all of the risks. These may include such measures as: flood barriers; dry floodproofing, improved storm sewers, improved roofing to prevent wind damage; enlarged roof drains to prevent water intrusion; hurricane windows and shutters; elevation of electrical and communications equipment; replacement and upgrade of AC chillers to reduce energy costs: improved emergency response plans, etc.

Recommend solutions

In Step 5, Coastal Risk matches the potential mitigation remedies with the risks to the building and makes specific recommendations of solutions and, more definite cost estimates are provided.

IMPLEMENT solutions

We have found that while some real property owners/operators, investors, lenders, tenants, etc. may have obtained “high-level” climate change risk assessments, few have any specific plans of action to mitigate those risks. Coastal Risk doesn’t leave its risk assessment clients hanging when they ask, “OK. That’s the bad news. What do I do, next?”

We partner with our clients to develop a bespoke program to accelerate their assets’ safety and resilience. We refer to this as our 6-step, B-Resilient™ business process. This process helps companies determine if “at risk” properties should be targeted for mitigation investments or, in some cases, divestment. This will permit companies to maintain profitable assets, while making them more resilient.

An important part of our B-Resilient™ process is the Advisory Services division of Coastal Risk. We call this our Ecosystem of Experts™. We deploy on the client’s behalf a wide-array of national and internationally-recognized climate scientists, engineers, architects, storm water and flood mitigation, and regulatory permitting experts.