Thousands of buildings in Dublin at risk of coastal flooding by 2100

Following on from our visualization of climate risk in the San Francisco Bay Area, we’ve turned our attention across the Atlantic to Dublin, Ireland, where our Founder and CEO Iggy Bassi is speaking at this week’s Dublin Climate Summit 2022.

Using our advanced data visualization capabilities, our team has created a 3D image to highlight flooding risk over the Central Area of Dublin by the year 2100. The image shows that in a business as usual climate scenario, over 8,500 buildings will be affected by coastal flooding in Dublin’s Central Area, with an average depth of 1.7 meters. Damaged areas include businesses (hotels, museums, financial district), private property (residential homes) and energy suppliers (power stations). Risk is presented on a continuous scale, where light yellow represents lowest risk and dark red the highest risk.

The image stands as a powerful visual and emotional reminder that climate change, if left unabated, will have a devastating effect on cityscapes and infrastructures, creating negative economic and social consequences - within and outside of cities. Images like these leave no doubt – we must act now to mitigate the damage to physical assets that climate change will bring if left unchecked.

Cervest’s Advanced Data Visualization team offers these additional perspectives on the visualization:

• This image considers only the risk associated with coastal flooding. When other climate hazards are added, such as extreme heat and wind stress. increasingly larger areas of Dublin will be affected

• This visualization shows a business as usual scenario. If mitigation policies, such as making good on national emissions reduction commitments, deforestation pledges and implementing mandatory legislation on reporting standards are applied in the near future, this scenario might change. Even so, there is a lot of inertia already in place based on prior climate events and human actions (and inactions), so damages are inevitable. Even if we reach Net Zero tomorrow, physical risk is already locked into our system due to past actions.

Globally, physical assets worth $2.5 trillion are already at risk from climate change. Visualizations like these help us understand the magnitude and the consequences on a local level and reinforce the importance of keeping global heating to a minimum. They show us that the places we know and love, that we took for granted were permanent fixtures, are actually part of a fragile and interconnected system – one that is being transformed by climate change.

Armed with EarthScan’s on-demand, science-based Climate Intelligence insights, everyone can make better decisions about everything from building resilience, to city planning, to insurance coverage, to identifying where – and where not – to build.

Showing the impact of climate change on the places we are familiar with drives awareness. Awareness is step one in creating incentives to protect the shared assets we all rely on and, most importantly, to avoid the worst possible futures that will arise from apathy and inaction.

The theme of this year's Dublin Climate Summit is Powering Net Zero, The New Pace of Energy Transition. Cervest’s Iggy Bassi will speak about Climate Intelligence (CI) and the ESG Opportunity. Joining experts in climate and finance, the panel will discuss trends and insights about the emerging role of CI in measuring climate risk and mitigation, and how global firms are managing climate-related financial risk, including Ireland’s approach to climate-related disclosure regulations. The event is taking place in person and virtually.

Iggy will make the case that achieving Net Zero is essential, but is insufficient on its own. With economic losses expected to rise to $23 trillion by 2050, companies and governments cannot afford to ignore physical risk. Looking at just one city, a future flood-prone Dublin, brings the consequences of inaction into sharp focus.

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