Resilience-adjusted Risk Index

Climate change poses multifaceted risks to locations around the globe, impacting economies, ecosystems, and communities. Traditionally, climate risk assessments, such our Physical Climate Risk Index, have focused purely on physical risks such as heat stress, drought, flooding, and other natural hazards. While these assessments are crucial, they overlook the role of adaptation and resilience measures that can significantly mitigate these risks.

To address this gap, we have developed a novel methodology that fuses data on adaptation and resilience into physical climate risk scores, resulting in a Resilience-Adjusted Risk assessment. The following figure shows how AlphaGeo ingests, processes and presents climate risk impact. Raw data from various sources are curated into specific features for both risk and resilience. We then apply respective damage functions to these features to calculate hazard impacts and resilience coefficients. The hazard impacts quantify the percentage of damage on exposed assets based on the intensity and frequency of future hazards. The resilience coefficients quantify the effectiveness of local adaptation on hazard mitigation. Finally, we multiple the hazard impact with the resilience coefficient to obtain resilience-adjusted risk impact.

Overview of the Resilience-adjusted Risk Impact calculations

Our methodology enhances the accuracy of climate risk assessments and recognizes that, while physical risks are a significant component of overall climate risk, the capacity of locations, communities and infrastructure to adapt and remain resilient amidst future volatilities can dramatically alter the risk landscape.

By doing so, we aim to provide a more nuanced and actionable understanding of location-based climate risks. Whether you are a policymaker, investor, or environmental researcher, the Resilience-Adjusted Risk Index is designed to inform better strategic and investment decisions.

A summary of the underlying measures and indicators are presented in the flowchart below:

AlphaGeo's methodology integrates local adaptation measures as well as metrics of societal resilience as modifiers to a location's physical climate risk exposure, resulting in a more accurate assessment of the true impact of climate change.

You may explore the differences between the Climate Risk Index and the Resilience-adjusted Risk Index in our interactive app here. To understand the novel method and data sources used in the construction of the index, please write to us at [e-mail].

Toggling between Physical Risk and RAJ Risk. Both maps reveal different insights that provide a more nuanced and actionable understanding of location-based climate risks.