A risk model for everyone: supporting climate adaptation decisions based on economic and social vulnerability

We present the Rapid Economics of Climate Adaptation tool which releases later this year. Built to provide out-of-the-box risk modelling anywhere on the planet, the tool is a user-friendly interface exploring climate risk data and adaptation options in terms of economic and human impacts. In the back end it connects to the CLIMADA (CLIMate ADAptation) risk model which runs rapid calculations while the user navigates.

The tool is built to assess the economic and human impacts of natural disasters in different climate scenarios and to describe the co-benefits of adaptation measures. Of particular note is a new, quantitative description of social vulnerability, allowing the user to explore vulnerability-driven adaptation within and between communities.

This first version of the tool includes tropical cyclone wind and extreme heat hazards with human and economic exposure. It will be expanded with additional hazards, impacts and co-benefits over time, and will extend to cover impacts on biodiversity.

The tool is open source, with the web front end connecting to a new, public remote calculations API, where users (either on the site, from a separate python client or via HTTP requests) can trigger CLIMADA risk calculations.

We aim to support climate adaptation decision-makers without access to bespoke, often expensive, modelling or who don’t have the technical capacity to conduct their own studies.

The work is conducted by the Weather and Climate Risks Group at ETH Zurich, the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and Vizzuality and is partly funded the Swiss Re Foundation.