Feasibility study on climate resilience declarations for real estate

Climate change and associated risk create high costs for society and must be considered in both city planning and construction. The increasing recognition of threats influence how investments are made both in future projects and in valuations of existing assets.

The project aims at conducting a feasibility study on how a “climate resilience declaration” (CRD) can create:

• a tool for better valuation and incitements by the financial market for contractors, real-estate owners and others to increase efforts regarding climate change adaption,
• easy to understand benchmarks for climate resilience of infrastructure (mainly buildings) for comparability and to reduce uncertainty if insurance coverage can be guaranteed.

We vision a system where all relevant stakeholders can act based on one single classification, similar to the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). Similarly, a CRD could create transparency for investors and homeowners, and create better material for decision making for any relevant actor.

The project will bring cross disciplinary researchers together with relevant stakeholders representing the financial sector, insurance sector, property owners, authorities and industry to examine if a resilience declaration could be feasible by proposing and testing a prototype system. The expected outcome is a better understanding for a CRD, what risks should be included, useful material for assessment and necessary prerequisites, possible scoring systems or indices for risk vs. mitigations, suggestions for business models and impacts on actors in the financial market.