Long-Term Coastal Flood Risk Ratings Debut Online

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A new venture out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has come up with a valuable yet low-cost way to help individuals, communities, business, and government coastal locations get climate-ready and storm-safe. It also enables real estate brokers, home inspection services, and financial institutions that underwrite or package mortgages to improve the quality of their services.

Florida fading cityscape (coastalriskconsulting.com)

Dow Jones MarketWatch describes Coastal Risk Consulting, LLC, as “the leading online flood prediction technology company.” Last week, CRC unveiled a first-of-its-kind flood forecast service for more than 50 million coastal properties in the US. CRC’s proprietary models promote property resilience by identifying climate change threats, assessing coastal flood risk and potential consequences, and evaluating adaptation solutions.

The Coastal Risk Rapid Assessment™ Report and FIRST Score™ are the coastal real estate equivalent of a personal credit score or a CARFAX rating, says Nancy Dahlberg of the Miami Herald. In CRC’s first couple of days on the market, property developers, a golf course, a power plant, and individual homeowners learned whether their properties risk significant flooding over the next 30 years.

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The need for better coastal flood risk information has never been greater, says MarketWatch:

“Chronic and increasing ‘nuisance’ or sunny-day’ flooding from rising sea levels and tidal flooding already affects Annapolis, Norfolk, Miami Beach, San Francisco, and other cities in US coastal and estuary flood zones.”

CRRA flood inundation risk assessment maps  (coastalriskconsulting.com)The CRC reports constitute the world’s first online climate impact risk and due diligence service for real estate at the individual property level. Brainchild of Wharton grad, longtime environmental lawyer, and Florida International and U of Cincinnati educator Albert Slap, the CRRA and FIRST Score™ empower current and prospective land owners to make more informed decisions regarding coastal real property–especially important now that climate change is causing sea levels to rise.
Says Slap:

“[The] technology is not going away. People are going to be adding it to their market baskets of tools with which to judge properties. Better information leads to better decision making.

While we don’t guarantee that the climate impacts projected in this report will occur at the specific property, our forecasts are based upon sound science and publicly available government databases. This information has always been available from big engineering companies. We’re democratizing… to make it available to millions of people at an affordable price.”

That would be $49.95 for a short report and score based on the projected number of days of flooding over time,  detailed 20-page reports costing $250 to $400, and custom reports for neighborhoods, communities, business,  government facilities, and multinationals. CRC has also partnered with the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI) and has also been working with IBM’s Smarter Cities program.

Sample CRRA property location map (coastalriskconsulting.com)Questions the CRRA process can help with:

  • Should I purchase the property in the first place?
  • If I own a coastal flood risk property, should I improve on it?
  • What impacts will climate change have on the fair market value of the real estate over time?
  • Should I plan for adaptation measures, now, to protect my investment?

You can examine a sample Coastal Risk Rapid Assessment™ Report and brief  “How It Works” video at this link.

Engineering, architecture, geospatial analysis, natural systems, health and education, and legal and regulatory specialists make up the CRC team. Among them:

  • Dr. Leonard Berry, an author of the southeastern section of the current National Climate Assessment, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, and former Director of the Florida Center for Environmental Studies at FAU, who has testified before the Senate and was recently quoted by The Washington Post on President Obama’s recent trip to the Florida Everglades;
  • Dr. Keren Bolter, a South Florida Regional Planning Council policy analyst who has collaborated on several other important projects (MIT Sea Level Rise Scenario planning, Alternative Futures project, Anglo-Floridian partnership to exchange adaptation strategies); and
  • Dr. Brian Soden, Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, Professor at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Science, and a member of the IPCC group that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore.

Sample CRRA 30-year flooding graph (coastalriskconsulting.com)The CRC experts say that if your property is located in one or more government-designated coastal flood risk zones and if the CRRA indicates that your property will experience 30 or more days of non-storm-related flooding per year, then you should definitely consider taking steps now to increase climate readiness and storm safety. The company also provides on-site climate resilience inspections.


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