Verisk, a prominent global data analytics and technology provider, has expanded its suite of sustainability and resilience analytics with the introduction of a new Climate Risk Dataset.
This dataset, developed by Verisk Maplecroft, the company’s risk intelligence business, offers powerful geospatial insights into one of the most pressing challenges confronting global businesses today: climate risk.
The Climate Risk Dataset is designed to provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution for a wide range of stakeholders, including insurers, corporations, banks, and investors.
Its primary purpose is to help these entities identify and assess their exposure to both current and future climate-related risks, encompassing global operations, supply chains, and portfolios, the company noted.
Developed by an in-house team of climate scientists and grounded in the latest climate model projections, the dataset features newly unveiled Climate Scenarios.
These scenarios assess the evolution of physical risks such as heat, precipitation, drought, and sea-level rise over time, considering different emissions pathways.
Additionally, the dataset includes global risk indices that cover climate-related socio-economic vulnerabilities and a wide range of transition issues, offering a comprehensive evaluation of climate risk factors worldwide.
Dr. Richard Hewston, the Director of Climate and Resilience at Verisk Maplecroft, emphasised the critical importance of navigating the direct and indirect impacts of climate change for multinational organisations.
He highlighted the need for credible and trustworthy data to effectively identify, manage, and report climate risk exposures, acknowledging the complexity of this task.
Key features of the Climate Risk Dataset include coverage of 32 hazards and issues on a global scale, with 16 physical climate risks across seven time periods and three emissions pathways.
This extensive dataset consists of over 330 global climate hazard risk indices, providing subnational granularity to assist in pinpointing risks to assets and specific locations.
It also offers subnational socio-economic indices that measure the adaptive capacity of nations, sensitivity to climate change, climate vulnerability, and national-level transition indices that quantify risks associated with emissions, climate litigation, carbon policies, and environmental regulations.
The dataset’s depth and breadth offer a range of benefits for companies, including the ability to perform global risk assessments across their operations, supply chains, and portfolios, alignment with climate reporting standards, stress testing of resilience, insurance and investment strategies, and the identification of commercial opportunities in various markets.
It also helps companies isolate areas of low resilience, develop effective mitigation measures, understand legal and regulatory challenges related to the energy transition, and assess the socio-economic impacts of climate change on a global scale.
Moreover, the Climate Risk Dataset goes beyond assessing direct physical threats and delves into the often overlooked “cascading” climate risks, which can have profound impacts on areas such as food security, migration, economic stability, and civil unrest. This interconnected approach to risk analysis enables companies to proactively address secondary climate impacts.
