The Global Risks Alliance (GRA)
Private-equity and real-asset portfolios hold factories, warehouses, data centres, care homes, farms and infrastructure in specific places, exposed to flood, heat, wind, wildfire and drought, and dependent on power, water and transport that can fail. This page sets out how physical climate risk reaches a privately held asset and its owner, how exposure is located and assessed when site data are thin, and what the evidence serves for the sponsors, boards, lenders and insurers who decide.
The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.
Layers 3
Activity and exposure, for this page
Keyboard, with the map focused
Hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom
Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
Loading the latest NASA imagery.
Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.
For physical risk to assets, in GRA's spatial-finance reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and flood water with relief in 3D and built-up and settlement extent from NASA GIBS, framed on the contiguous United States; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
Physical climate risk is the risk of loss from acute hazards such as flood, wind and wildfire and chronic shifts such as heat and drought at specific locations. Private portfolios hold factories, warehouses, data centres, care homes, farms and infrastructure that depend on power, water and transport, so the work starts with a geocoded asset register.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Physical risk to assets · Fund III · Quarter 2
| Company 7, logistics | 4.7 | 10 | High | Watchlist |
| Company 3, healthcare | 3.7 | 32 | Low | On plan |
| Company 5, industrial | 4.8 | 12 | Medium | On plan |
| Company 9, software | 2.2 | 20 | Low | On plan |
Climate and infrastructure disruptions. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Physical risk starts with where assets and suppliers are. Many portfolio companies do not hold a complete, geocoded list of their sites, so exposure analysis often begins by building that inventory.
A flood or heatwave damages property, stops production and cuts the utilities and transport an asset relies on. Business interruption can exceed physical damage, and much of it originates outside the site boundary.
As hazards intensify, premiums rise, deductibles widen and some cover is withdrawn. Uninsured losses fall to the company and its owner, and the cost of cover enters operating margins and exit diligence.
Buyers increasingly diligence physical risk at exit. Exposure that was not priced at entry can reduce the exit value or the pool of buyers, even when no event occurs during the holding period.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Geocoding | Assigning precise coordinates to each operating site so hazards can be overlaid. |
| Business interruption | Loss of income while operations are disrupted by damage or the failure of a dependency. |
| Acute and chronic risk | Event-driven hazards such as storms, and long-term shifts such as rising heat. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating sites geocoded | share of sites with verified coordinates | annual | Company asset register | REPORTED |
| Assets in high flood hazard zones | count and replacement value, by hazard class | annual | Hazard maps intersected with the asset register | MODELLED |
| Extreme heat days at operating sites | days per year above a site threshold | annual | Reanalysis and climate projections | MODELLED |
| Business interruption tolerance | days of downtime before customer or covenant breach | annual | Continuity planning | ESTIMATED |
| Insured share of replacement value | percent, by peril | annual | Insurance schedules | REPORTED |
| Weather-related losses | currency per event, insured and uninsured | per event | Claims and incident records | OBSERVED |
| Portfolio companies reporting physical risk | share of companies in a fund | annual | Fund sustainability reporting under ISSB or SFDR | DECLARED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| ERA5 reanalysis (Copernicus Climate Change Service) | Hourly temperature, rainfall and wind, global, for hazard baselines | Free and open, attribution |
| WRI Aqueduct | Water stress, riverine and coastal flood hazard layers | Creative Commons Attribution |
| JRC global river flood hazard maps | Flood extent and depth by return period | Free and open, attribution |
| NGFS climate scenarios | Physical and transition pathways for scenario analysis | Free, attribution |
| IPCC Interactive Atlas | Projected changes in climate hazards by region and warming level | Free, attribution |
| Munich Re NatCatSERVICE and Swiss Re Institute sigma | Historical catastrophe loss records and insurance protection gaps | Public summaries; detailed data proprietary |
| Company asset registers and insurance schedules | Site locations, values and cover terms | Confidential to owners, lenders and insurers |
Private Equity Nexus prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| General partner investment committees | Whether physical exposure is priced and manageable at entry, and what adaptation the plan must fund | Exposure by site and hazard; hazard-to-cash pathways; insurance availability |
| Portfolio-company boards | Which sites to protect, relocate or insure differently, and when | Site-level exposure, interruption tolerance and loss history |
| Insurers and brokers | On what terms to cover property and business interruption | Asset inventories, site hazard layers and loss records, with labels |
| Lenders and limited partners | Whether physical risk is reflected in credit terms and manager disclosure | Portfolio exposure summaries and disclosure coverage under ISSB and SFDR |
Direct damage to buildings and equipment is the most visible channel. Business interruption is often larger: a flooded plant or an extended power outage stops revenue while costs continue. Supply chain disruption extends the reach of a hazard to companies far from where it struck. Rising insurance premiums or withdrawal of cover raise costs and can leave assets uninsurable.
For private owners, a further channel is exit value. Buyers increasingly consider physical risk, so an asset whose exposure grows during the holding period may sell for less or be harder to sell. Lenders may also price physical risk into refinancing.
Overlaying asset locations with hazard data. Limits: hazard data resolution varies, and future projections carry climate model uncertainty.
Estimating damage for given hazard intensities. Limits: generic functions may not fit specific assets.
Testing financial effects under hazard scenarios, using scenario design and stress testing. Limits: illustrative, not predictive.
Mapping dependence on infrastructure and suppliers. Limits: data on dependencies is incomplete.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.