Climate Risk Index from
Space Platforms (CRISP)

Background

Telespazio UK and Assimila are part of the Space4Climate Climate Risk Disclosure Task Group, and over the past two years have been exploring how the UK space sector can support the green finance sector in making climate-informed decisions and disclosures.

Engagement with the finance sector has highlighted an interest in climate data that focuses on extreme climate conditions, such as temperature extremes, heavy precipitation, drought, wind speed and sea level. These data are useful to the finance sector for understanding climate risk, i.e. the risks that climate change will bring for particular areas or assets of interest. To help with this, the task group is exploring ways to generate a climate risk index that provides this information in a user-friendly format.

What is the CRISP Tool?

CRISP stands for Climate Risk Index from Space Platforms and is a tool that brings together quality assured earth observation, historical reanalysis and climate projection datasets to generate a range of climate indices:

  • High temperatures – Frequency of high temperature extremes
  • Low temperatures – Frequency of low temperature extremes
  • Heavy rain – Maximum 5-day rainfall in the month 
  • Drought – Maximum number of consecutive dry days
  • High wind – Frequency of high wind speeds 
  • Sea level – Sea level measurements time series

These indices will be analysed to quantify the frequency of extreme events and combined with vulnerability and exposure information to generate a climate risk index for particular areas of interest. Users will be able to access the climate indices as well as climate risk information for their location of interest through a flexible interface. There will also be a number of use cases to show companies how they can use this data in their own assessments of climate risk.

The need for CRISP

There is a growing need for satellite-derived earth observation data to understand our changing climate and the risks climate change pose to our lives and businesses. CRISP will provide access to quality assured, world-leading climate data to help study our changing climate and extreme weather events. It will provide information needed by companies to perform assessments of the risks that climate change will bring to their activities and assets, and will help shape the action that they need to take.

The UK government has announced its intention to mandate climate disclosures by large companies and financial institutions across the economy by 2025. Aside from national regulations, large companies are increasingly obliged to assess and report on their climate risks so that these can feed into stock prices and decision-making. Additionally, as customers and investors are becoming more ‘climate aware’, they are beginning to demand higher accountability from companies. Climate risk disclosure is picking up pace and there is a significant opportunity for satellite data in supporting Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and other regulatory drivers in monitoring and assessment of physical climate risks, i.e. risks to a company’s own physical infrastructure or operations, e.g. from flooding, wild fires, sea level rise and storm surges. It is anticipated that within the next few years geospatial techniques will be deeply embedded in financial and risk analysis across the industry.