Future Risk

Approaching With Growing Urgency.

According to NOAA, FEMA, and other government agencies, future climate-related water risks are approaching with a growing urgency. With rising temperatures, the occurrence of severe weather events will continue to increase while expanding over larger geographical areas of the continent.

Identifying Potential Risks Early On

Complex Predictions

As we know from direct experience, water’s complex behavior can be hard to predict. The compound has a reactive behavior, typically causing more—not less—consequential disruptions than experts could have ever predicted. This is why, whenever working with water’s unique dynamics, a company’s experience and expertise are crucial when it comes to fully recognizing the possible risks and how best to mitigate them.

Investor expectations have increasingly put pressure on issuers of both securities and bonds. While the SEC has proposed to mandate publicly traded corporations to disclose their risk mitigation activities, there is yet no public mandate that will require municipalities issuing bonds to do the same. Regardless, given the growing interest by the investor community, it’s believed that city and state entities will soon find increased pressure placed on them by potential bondholders to disclose what precautions are currently being taken to mitigate the risk of weather events and to make sure they have a sound business continuity plan that ensures resiliency to protect against growing climate change.

The risk mitigation experts at Portadam are happy to consult with both the public and private sectors on weather-related risk mitigation planning.

Infrastructure

Impact on Aging Infrastructure

Changing weather patterns have come to have a growing impact on aging infrastructure. According to NOAA and FEMA, over the last 50 years, both inland and coastal land masses have been increasingly affected by precipitation and, subsequently, floodings. Many structures were built for different weather conditions than they are exposed to today and may be even further susceptible to the consequences of future climate risks. Areas that were considered less prone to flooding just a few decades ago might today, or in the near future, experience active flood threats. The geographical areas prone to water-related extreme weather events are concurrently increasing with the severity of such events -effectively escalating the need to protect the structures.

Increased Risk

Aging infrastructure —from bridges and tunnels to dams and reservoirs— plays a vital role in the ongoing discussions of climate risks. Their age-driven vulnerability to severe weather events exposes them to increased risk of physical damage and disruption of operations for both businesses and municipalities. More critically, it compromises the safety of people. Future risks stemming from water include direct damage to structures through heavy rainfall and flooding and indirectly by the increased exposure to heavy water flows causing erosions. Mitigation can be done by identifying the risks and proactively implementing solutions to keep your infrastructure safe – either during restoration efforts or active threats.