Cervest enhances its climate intelligence with decision-ready insights and globally comparable risk ratings for wildfire

LONDON – November 10, 2022 – Climate intelligence company Cervest has added wildfire to the on-demand and science-backed climate risk analysis available in EarthScan™. The wildfire signal assesses current and future wildfire danger on individual assets and portfolios across different climate emission scenarios.

ESG leaders, asset managers and sustainability consultants are using the wildfire signal in combination with Cervest’s globally comparable risk rating system to screen thousands of assets for current and future wildfire danger and make climate intelligent decisions about asset prioritization and risk adaptation. EarthScan’s wildfire insights also enable customers to assess and rate the distribution of wildfire danger across regions. This capability is useful for assessing wildfire danger across supply chains in order to mitigate future operational disruption.

With the addition of wildfire, EarthScan customers can now screen, analyze, rate and report asset-level risk on 500 million discoverable assets, or any customer-defined asset across six climate hazards: flooding, wind, heat stress, precipitation, drought, and wildfire. EarthScan's combined physical risk rating enables users to compare climate risk across all six hazards and gain a comprehensive view of climate risk that is only available in EarthScan.

Decision-makers across industries, including real estate, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and financial services, are using wildfire insights from EarthScan to:

• Pinpoint the assets that are most at risk from wildfire and incorporate the insights into pre-transaction due diligence, risk mitigation measures and asset prioritization.

• Climate-align decisions across the entirety of an asset’s life cycle, including location planning, which suppliers to partner with, and when to acquire or retire an asset.

• Strengthen regulatory reporting and comply with disclosure requirements aligned to the TCFD and EU Taxonomy.

The wildfire signal combines Cervest’s groundbreaking Earth Science AI™ methodology with atmospheric information (humidity levels, temperature, precipitation and wind), the Fire Weather Index (FWI) and land cover data from the European Space Agency to estimate the conditions conducive to wildfire.

Asset damage and economic losses from wildfire are increasing – both in areas already at high risk, such as the Midwest United States and the Mediterranean, and also in previously low-risk areas, like South East England. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) reports that in the United States alone, wildfires accounted for over USD11 billion in damage between 2021-2022. In Europe, the cost of this summer’s wildfires reached more than EUR8,1 billion with thousands of hectares of green space burnt as the continent battled record heat waves, worsened by climate change - a driver for the intense wildfire season.

Accurately predicting and assessing wildfire danger is often restricted to areas where wildfires are a common occurrence. Earth Science AI overcomes this limitation, enabling EarthScan to show wildfire danger on assets in both high- and low-risk areas over the next 80 years. “One pitfall is to assume that because your business has never experienced a catastrophic wildfire event, that it is not or will not be at risk in the future. Many of our customers are surprised at how their wildfire danger changes when EarthScan shows them insights looking out over the next decades,” says Dr. Benjamin Laken, VP of Science at Cervest.

Wildfire seasons are starting earlier, growing in length and frequency, leaving record-breaking damage and financial losses in their wake. Decision-makers need to understand wildfire danger and quantify it at scale. “You don’t need to be a climate scientist to see that our planet is under increasing threat from wildfire. Decision-makers cannot afford to wait. EarthScan enables organizations to quickly screen thousands of assets for wildfire danger and incorporate these insights into decision-making and reporting.”