Resilience building by adapting

The impact of our changing climate is being felt across the globe as we experience more extreme weather events. A strong concerted drive towards emissions reductions will help mitigate the worst of these changes, but there will still be noticeable effects. The future climate will be more unpredictable and so you should consider how to reduce the impact that this will have on your business. Planning ahead how you will withstand these impacts is called climate adaptation and it serves to increase your resilience against extreme weather events. Most prominently your business could face the effects of:

• Damage due to excess water as a result of cloudbursts, (localised) flooding, and intense hailstorms;
• Lack of water availability resulting from drought and water scarcity events;
• Intense heat resulting in heat stress, heat-induced illness, and productivity loss.

Practical solutions to adapt to, and thus reduce the impact of, extreme weather can be applied on-site or in the local environment. This consists of solutions focused on the building itself or spatial measures. Consider, for instance, applying white paint to roofs, creating green roofs, adding (natural) shading to tackle heat stress, or creating porous pavement solutions for increasing water infiltration.

We offer a range of services to help you understand your future needs around resilience building by adapting. Whether you are just starting out, or already know what you want to do, we can help you to develop or finetune your strategic and practical choices around climate adaptation action. Specifically, we can help by:

• Scoping and understanding the impact of extreme weather events on your business (materiality);
• Providing insights into potential solutions and measures that could be applied to your site(s);
• Quantify the effect of adaptation measures before decision-making;
• Develop a comprehensive companywide climate adaptation strategy.