CRL Map

Welcome to the Climate Risk Map! This guide will help you get started with using the tool to understand climate-related hazards and their impacts on physical assets. Whether you're new to climate data or an experienced analyst, this guide will walk you through the basics so you can start exploring climate risk insights right away.

Aims and Objectives

“40 years ago, the US experienced a billion-dollar disaster every four months. Today, we experience a billion-dollar disaster every three weeks. Climate change carries significant financial risks to Washington state businesses and local communities, and we need to rapidly develop open-source tools and resources to help decision-makers adapt.”

The Climate Risk Map was built with this urgency in mind. As climate-related hazards increase in both frequency and severity, the need for transparent, data-driven tools to assess and mitigate risks has never been more critical. The platform's primary aim is to equip decision-makers with the insights necessary to understand the impacts of climate change on infrastructure and assets, allowing for more resilient planning and resource allocation.

Objectives

• Provide Actionable Insights: Deliver detailed, asset-level risk assessments that allow users to evaluate infrastructure exposure to climate hazards over different time horizons.
• Support Strategic Decision-Making: Enable long-term planning by projecting climate risks across various scenarios, including emissions pathways and time periods, to help governments and businesses prioritize resources.
• Ensure Transparency and Accessibility: As an open-source platform, the Climate Risk Map offers full visibility into its data sources and models, promoting regulatory compliance and trust in its predictions.
• Promote Adaptation and Resilience: Equip stakeholders, from local planners to financial institutions, with the tools needed to respond proactively to the evolving landscape of climate risks.

By meeting these objectives, the Climate Risk Map seeks to bridge the gap between climate science and practical, real-world decision-making, ensuring that all sectors have the necessary information to build resilience against future climate challenges.

Quick-Start Guide

Follow this step-by-step guide for a basic overview of the map functionality. The map can be accessed here.

Selecting Climate Scenario Parameters

First, we need to select a combination of parameters for the desired climate scenario.

Select a Climate Risk Measure: Start by choosing a climate metric of interest from the drop-down menu. These are climate hazards curated by our team that may pose potential risks to infrastructure. Choose a Scenario: Select one of the available climate scenarios (e.g., SSP126 for low emissions, SSP585 for high emissions). Scenarios help you understand potential futures under different climate action pathways. Select a Timescale: Use the timeline slider to choose the time period you are interested in, ranging from the 2020s to the 2100s for all months. This lets you see how climate risks evolve over time for particular months of the year. The example on the right illustrates a scenario where the selected measure is "% Area Covered by Burnt Vegetation"—used as a proxy for wildfire risk—under a moderate emissions projection for August in the 2060s.

Selecting Infrastructure Overlays

Second, we need to select the specific types of infrastructure we are interested in visualizing.

Select Infrastructure Overlays: On the right-hand side, you'll see a layers icon. Hover over it to reveal the available infrastructure overlays. In this example, the available infrastructure includes specific types of power grid data, which provides insight into its exposure under the selected climate scenario.

Download Data

From here, you can explore the map and your particular areas of interest visually to get a sense of asset exposure. You may wish to download the data to do an offline analysis, which can be done easily.

Draw a bounding box: On the right-hand side below the layers icon, there is a small black box icon. Clicking this will allow you to draw a box (or multiple boxes) over your area of interest. Click Download Data: On the control panel, click the Download Data button to download a CSV file.

Download Data Output

Below is an example of the data structure you might see when you download the CSV file from the Climate Risk Map. For a full list of fields and their descriptions in the download, see TO DO.

OSM ID	OSM Subtype	County Name	Tags	SSP	Month	Decade	Climate Variable	Climate Exposure
41543109	Line	Douglas County	{'name': 'Grand Coulee-Chief Joseph No 3', 'power': 'line', 'cables': '3', 'voltage': '500000', 'operator': 'Bonneville Power Administration'}	370	8	2060	Burnt Fraction All	0.945
41543169	Line	Douglas County	{'power': 'line'}	370	8	2060	Burnt Fraction All	1.445
41543169	Line	Grant County	{'power': 'line'}	370	8	2060	Burnt Fraction All	1.445
40531749	Line	Douglas County	{'power': 'line'}	370	8	2060	Burnt Fraction All	2.435
40531749	Line	Grant County	{'power': 'line'}	370	8	2060	Burnt Fraction All	1.689

Methodology

This section provides an overview of how the Climate Risk Mapping Application is built and the methodology behind its calculations and data processing.

Data Sources

Climate

• % Area that is Covered by Burnt Vegetation: This initial variable for the prototype is sourced from CMIP6 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6), which provides multiple scenarios of future climate conditions.