Risk Factor from First Street Foundation

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Asset Classes

All Asset Types

Topics Covered
  • Environmental
  • Market Insights
  • Property Scores
  • ESG
  • Risks / Perils

Risk Factor provides property-level data for flooding, wildfire, and extreme heat risk. Each property has a cumulative risk score between 1-10 for every peril. In addition to extensive risk statistics, Risk Factor also provides interactive hazard maps depicting current and future risk, historic events and community risk. In 2023, Risk Factor will also release hurricane wind, air quality, drought and climate migration tools.

Property-Level Flood Statistics: Flood Factor® is powered by the nation’s most comprehensive, peer-reviewed, probabilistic flood model and is produced at a 3 meter resolution. The first-of-its-kind methodology incorporates the four major contributors to flooding (tidal, rain, riverine and storm surge), projects future climate scenarios for a variety of return periods, incorporates local adaptation, and validates against satellite and government records. Dataset includes access to interactive flood maps and interactive damage and downtime day estimates based on the building characteristics.

Property-Level Wildfire Statistics: Fire Factor™ is powered by a comprehensive, peer-reviewed wildfire model, created by a team of wildfire experts and is produced at a 30 meter resolution. The methodology analyzes wildfire hazards, projects future climate scenarios, incorporates local controlled burning, and validates against satellite imagery and government records. Dataset includes average and max flame length risk and likelihood of complete destruction based on home vulnerability. It also includes risk information from historic wildfire events within 20 miles of the selected property, hazard maps, ember risks, and interactive costs to rebuild after a fire based on the building characteristics.

Property-Level Extreme Heat Statistics: Heat Factor™ is powered by a unique, custom-built extreme heat model that leverages air and land surface temperature data along with elevation, impervious surface, and a distance to water data, to determine heat risk at a property level. Dataset includes extreme heat projections from today to 30 years in the future as well as localized “hot days” and estimated costs for cooling based on building characteristics. It also includes risk information on the number of days a property might experience health risks such as health caution days, dangerous days, or extended heat waves, interactive extreme heat maps, cooling costs, and associated emissions for a property.

Property-Level Hurricane Wind Statistics: Wind Factor™ is a first of its kind wind risk analysis, powered by a model that builds off of decades of scientific peer-reviewed research and forecasts how hurricanes and costs from resulting wind damages to structures will change over time due to changes in the environment. To build an understanding of this risk, tens of thousands of synthetic, computer modeled hurricane tracks are used to build estimates of likely wind speed under the influence of a changing climate. For every location, the likely exposure to extreme wind is calculated for today and 30 years into the future, and takes into account the local conditions such as the roughness of the landscape surrounding a property.

About First Street Foundation

First Street Foundation

Risk Factor provides in-depth, climate adjusted, building specific risk assessments from flooding, wildfire, extreme heat and hurricane wind for every property across the United States over the next 30 years. Our models are purpose-built through transparent, peer reviewed methodologies, and are validated against real environmental events and by millions of users every day. Risk Factor is a tool created by First Street Foundation, a research and technology non-profit with a mission to make property climate risk accessible, easy to understand and actionable for businesses, governments, and individuals.

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