New EcoAct Climate Risk Platform assesses organisations’ physical vulnerability to climate risks

EcoAct, an Atos company launches the EcoAct Climate Risk Platform, a climate risk assessment and visualisation platform that assesses the vulnerability of organisations’ physical sites to 28 climate change hazards, supporting the identification and prioritisation of mitigation and adaptation measures.

With no credible pathway to 1.5°C according to UNEP’s latest Emissions Gap Report, the need for businesses to identify, mitigate and adapt to vulnerabilities as a result of climate change is becoming increasingly important.

The EcoAct Climate Risk Platform provides oversight of the exposure of an organisation’s portfolio of physical sites to all 28 of the climate risks included in the EU taxonomy[1], allowing users to explore different criticalities, climate scenarios and time horizons. The platform models both classical climate risks such as floods and heat waves, as well as less common risks, such as glacial lake outburst floods, salinisation of coastal water tables and the impact of ocean acidification.

 

State-of-the-art climate information aligned with reference frameworks

Aligned with leading climate reporting frameworks including the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the CDP’s global disclosure system, the platform will support organisations to adopt a proactive strategy to mitigating and adapting to climate change including if a business should consider transforming their business model entirely.

“Our latest Climate Reporting Performance research revealed that although most businesses consider climate change a principal risk, many still do not have sufficiently robust long-term plans to mitigate or adapt their business to climate change.

 This new platform, developed by our climate experts, and based on data from more than sixty climate risk analysis projects, can be adapted to any sector to support transformative change. It provides all organisations with the means to analyse climate scenarios, to access precise quantifications based on the latest scientific data and, ultimately, to facilitate informed decision-making with complete autonomy”, says Véronique Mariotti, Head of Climate Risk at EcoAct, an Atos company.

Accurate, versatile and customised visualisation of climate indicators

Based on the latest scientific data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and, in particular, its 6^th Climate Change Assessment Report published in 2021 and 2022, the EcoAct Climate Risk Platform offers an accurate and scientifically based quantification of physical climate change risk. To obtain maximum accuracy, the platform integrates the CORDEX[2] regional climate models with a resolution of up to 12 kilometre, based on the IPCC scenarios, as well as complementary datasets up to 30-metre resolution and from globally recognised organisations such as WRI[3] or NOAA[4]. The use of downscaled regional climate data makes the platform one of the most comprehensive and accurate commercially available to date.

The EcoAct Climate Risk Platform is part of Atos’ unique net-zero portfolio of business advisory services, digital services and tools, and nature-based solutions – giving organisations the means and visibility they need to take action on climate change today.

More information on the EcoAct Climate Risk Platform

Designed to combine scientific rigour with simplicity and flexibility of use, the EcoAct Climate Risk Platform allows the visualisation of climate indicators to be adapted to the needs, maturity and level of expertise of the organisation.

More specifically, the platform allows users to:

• Customise the visualisation of site exposure by cross-referencing it with three other types of information of the user’s choice: sites can be filtered according to their typology, their operational unit, their vulnerability or criticality, their level of preparedness for climatic hazards, or any other internal information that informs decision making
• Understand what is at stake in climate change: Will the most impactful climate hazards be more frequent, more intense, or both? The platform will help users understand the different adaptation actions required depending on the frequency or intensity of the changes expected (e.g., more intense floods require a re-evaluation of the sizing of drainage systems, while floods of the same intensity, but more frequent, lead rather to an increase in internal training for evacuation);
• Identify the most exposed sites, according to the physical value of the climate change indicators, but also using the qualitative exposure levels precalculated by the platform, and
• Characterise the necessary adaptation actions to be implemented based on quantitative data (litres of rainwater in a single metre square per day, temperature, number of days above 35°C, etc.) and a satellite visualisation to understand the environment in which the site is located. To facilitate ownership by operational managers, the platform also offers the possibility of downloading fact sheets on the climate risk profile of each site.

 

Glossary:

• Climate hazard: The potential occurrence of a natural or human-induced physical event or trend that may cause loss of life, injury, or other health impacts, as well as damage and loss to property, infrastructure, livelihoods, service provision, ecosystems and environmental resources.
• Exposure: The presence of people; livelihoods; species or ecosystems; environmental functions, services, and resources; infrastructure; or economic, social, or cultural assets in places and settings that could be adversely affected by a climate hazard.
• Vulnerability: The propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected by a climate hazard; this predisposition is an internal characteristic of the affected element.

 

NOTES

[1] The EU taxonomy is a classification system, establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities. It could play an important role helping the EU scale up sustainable investment and implement the European green deal. The EU taxonomy would provide companies, investors and policymakers with appropriate definitions for which economic activities can be considered environmentally sustainable. In this way, it should create security for investors, protect private investors from greenwashing, help companies to become more climate-friendly, mitigate market fragmentation and help shift investments where they are most needed.

[2] Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment, https://cordex.org. CORDEX is a World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) framework to evaluate regional climate model performance through a set of experiments aiming at producing regional climate projections.

 

[3] World Resources Institute, https://www.wri.org. A global research non-profit organisation with a focus on food, forests, water, energy, cities, climate, and ocean.

 

[4] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, https://www.noaa.gov. The American scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce works to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts.