Category Archives: Floods

Business Risk, Cyber Risk, Flood Insurance, Floods, Insurers and the Economy

RiskScan 2026 Reveals A More Interconnected Risk Landscape

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By Lewis Nibbelin, Research Writer, Triple-I

Organizations across the insurance value chain are navigating an increasingly complex risk landscape, demanding more integrated approaches to resilience shared among all segments of the property/casualty (P/C) market, according to RiskScan 2026, a new research study from Munich Re US and Triple-I.

Based on survey data from more than 1,700 participants in the United States and United Kingdom, RiskScan 2026 explores risk perceptions and exposures across five key market segments: 

  • P/C insurance carriers,
  • P/C agents and brokers,
  • Middle-market decision makers,
  • Small-business owners, and
  • consumers.

Comprising two in-depth reports, the study builds on the previous RiskScan 2024 and features a new report highlighting global specialty market perspectives and insights.

Across all audiences, cyber incidents, economic pressures, and AI emerged as chief concerns, indicating insurers and their customers are largely aligned on risks reshaping the market. Increasing frequency and severity of natural catastrophes also ranked high, particularly for perils traditionally associated with less catastrophic loss, such as wildfires, flooding, and severe convective storms.

“The real challenge – and opportunity – is in understanding how these forces intersect,” said Sabrina Hart, president and CEO of Munich Re Specialty North America. “A cyber event can trigger operational disruption, a climate event can cascade through supply chains, and legal inflation can magnify losses well beyond the initial event.”

Growing consumer awareness

While knowledge gaps remain, policyholders are becoming more aware of these connections. Consumers and businesses who participated in the 2024 survey, for instance, primarily did not identify legal system abuse as an insurance cost driver – a trend middle-market decision makers and small business owners reversed in the updated study.

Such responses suggest industry stakeholders increasingly recognize the long-term impacts of risks, rather than focus on the short-term disruptions of individual events. Economic conditions play a leading role in this shift as “a multiplier of insurance risk, affecting affordability, claims severity, capital allocation, and long-term market stability across the insurance value chain,” explained Michel Léonard, Triple-I’s chief economist and data scientist.

Flood and cyber take-up still low

Despite growing awareness, consumers continued to express less concern about flood than insurance professionals and businesses, in part reflecting misconceptions about flood risk and policy exclusions and limitations. Many consumers as well as small business owners are unaware that homeowners’ and commercial property insurance do not typically cover flood damage. Consumers may also believe flood coverage is unnecessary unless their mortgage lenders require it or drop their flood insurance coverage once their mortgage is paid off to save money.

Similarly, though all market segments considered cyber incidents a significant concern, the report notes that cyber take-up rates in the small commercial and personal line spaces remain low. Misunderstandings surrounding cyber risk coverage options and benefits help fuel this discrepancy, revealing a gap between insurer perceptions of product value and that of their customers.

“The protection gaps highlighted in this research underscore the urgent need to better educate consumers and businesses,” said Triple-I CEO Sean Kevelighan. “As flood, cyber, and other interconnected exposures continue to evolve, the industry has an important opportunity to strengthen public understanding, close protection gaps, and work collaboratively with consumers, policymakers, businesses, and communities to better predict, prepare, and prevent ever increasing risks.”

Learn More:

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Catastrophes, Disaster Preparedness, Disaster Resilience, Flood Insurance, Floods, Regulation, Risk-Based Pricing

NFIP Proposals Highlight Urgency of Collective Action on Resilience

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By Lewis Nibbelin, Research Writer, Triple-I

Proposed reforms to FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) would expand the role of private insurers in the flood market as part of a broader push for state and private sector participation in long-term disaster management and resilience.

Congress established NFIP in 1968, at a time when few private insurers were willing to write flood coverage. While private participation in the flood market has grown in recent years, NFIP has continued to cover more than half of all U.S. homeowners with flood insurance.

In their report released May 7, the FEMA Review Council described NFIP as “unsustainable” and “burdened by over $20 billion in debt” due to its “one-size-fits-all” approach to flood mapping, which “does not fully capture current or emerging flood hazards” on national and local scales. These shortcomings have contributed to inadequate insurance pricing and flood risk misconceptions among homeowners, exacerbating low flood insurance take-up rates in at-risk communities, the report said.

To ensure the availability of comprehensive flood protection, the report recommended establishing a depopulation program or a centralized flood insurance marketplace to shift more policies into the private market. Risk-based pricing for NFIP policyholders can also incentivize private involvement, the report said, as premiums adjust to reflect actual risk.

This transition builds upon NFIP’s Risk Rating 2.0 reforms, which aimed to make premium rates more actuarially sound and equitable by better aligning them with individual, property-level risk. As NFIP rates became further aligned with principles of risk-based pricing, some policyholders’ prices fell as many others rose, which boosted private market opportunities. Updates to the reforms based on new data could attract even greater private participation, the report said.

Private coverage gaps

Though flood was once considered an “untouchable” risk for the private market, advanced analytics capabilities and data sources have helped give them the comfort and flexibility they need to write the coverage. Federal regulations introduced in 2019 also allowed mortgage lenders to accept private flood insurance if the policies abided by regulatory definitions, propelling double-digit growth in private appetite.

Despite growth, private companies currently write only 27 percent of the flood market. Roughly 4.7 million homeowners have flood coverage through NFIP nationwide.

Mark Friedlander, Triple-I’s senior director of media relations, told USA Today Florida Network that private insurers are unprepared to take on all the risk NFIP covers, especially as flood risk severity rises.

“While private flood insurance is growing, NFIP remains vital for providing widespread, actuarially sound coverage against damages excluded from standard homeowners policies,” Friedlander said.

Ahead of a temporary NFIP lapse in 2025, a letter penned by organizations across the risk and insurance industry suggested the program’s absence “could further impact affordable housing, create additional challenges for small businesses, unnecessarily further increase the cost of homeownership, and must be avoided.”

Resilience key to insurance availability

For communities that invest in floodplain management, disbanding NFIP could disqualify homeowners from flood insurance premium discounts. FEMA currently incentivizes such practices through its voluntary Community Rating System, which rewards NFIP policyholders with corresponding discounts as high as 45 percent.

At a meeting with the FEMA Review Council before the 2025 lapse, NAIC members expressed support for these mitigation initiatives, with North Dakota Insurance Commissioner and NAIC Past President Jon Godfread adding “state insurance regulators are committed to expanding access to flood insurance through both the NFIP and private coverage.”

The recent restoration of FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program underscores the benefits of such multi-sector collaboration. Before its cancellation last year, the program had allocated more than $5 billion for investment in mitigation projects to alleviate human suffering and avoid economic losses from floods, wildfires, and other disasters.

Reinstated with several new rules to improve its impact, BRIC also “isn’t a perfect program, but it’s a necessary one,” said Daniel Kaniewski, CEO of Northstar Risk & Resilience, a former FEMA deputy administrator, and a Triple-I non-resident scholar. Though changes to the program may drive smarter resilience investment, he cautioned that “BRIC alone – or any federal program on its own – isn’t going to close the nation’s disaster resilience gap.”

“It’s going to take community leaders, emergency managers, businesses, nonprofits – and, of course, the insurance industry – pulling in the same direction,” Kaniewski said. “The burden can’t exclusively fall on property owners and federal taxpayers.”

Insurers have worked hard to develop partnerships that address these challenges. Strengthen Alabama Homes, for instance – financed by the insurance industry with more than $86 million in grants since 2016 – offers homeowners’ insurance discounts for those who build or retrofit their homes to voluntary IBHS construction standards for wind and hail resilience, prompting numerous states to implement their own programs.

Incentives and public-private collaboration will be critical to keeping insurance affordable and available amid the mounting toll of extreme weather. Swiss Re data indicates flooding, wildfires, and severe convective storms drove a record 92 percent of total global natural catastrophe insured losses in 2025, fueling a “decades-long trend of rising baseline risk.”

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Disaster Preparedness, Disaster Resilience, Flood Insurance, Floods, Homeowners Insurance, Hurricane

CSU Projects “Somewhat Below Normal” 2026 Hurricane Season

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By Lewis Nibbelin, Research Writer, Triple-I

Colorado State University (CSU) researchers predict a “somewhat below normal” Atlantic hurricane season in their initial 2026 projections, citing the likely development of a robust El Niño event as the primary reason for their forecast of six hurricanes this year.

Led by senior research scientist and Triple-I non-resident scholar Phil Klotzbach, the CSU TC-RAMS team predicts 13 named storms and six hurricanes, two of which will become major hurricanes, or those that reach Category 3 strength or higher. A typical Atlantic season sees 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes.

The team’s forecast stems from conditions favorable for a strong El Niño, characterized by above-average ocean temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. Typical El Niño events “tend to increase winds high up in the atmosphere,” Klotzbach explained, which increases levels of vertical wind shear, or changes in wind speed and direction.

Noting “too much shear tears hurricanes apart,” Klotzbach said that “especially when those events are moderate or strong, they cause very significant impacts in Atlantic hurricane activity.”

A potential record-setting super El Niño on the horizon would suggest impacts far beyond the Atlantic, including extreme heat around the globe. Bringing drought to some regions and flooding to others, the event would help suppress Atlantic hurricane activity while boosting hurricane as well as typhoon risks in the Pacific.

But while “the odds of landfall do go down when the forecast is for below normal activity,” Klotzbach emphasized “there have been significant landfalls in seasons that were somewhat below normal.”

For comparison, the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season produced 13 named storms and five hurricanes. Among those five, four became major, including three Category 5 storms – marking only the second year on record that more than two such storms occurred in the Atlantic Basin. Though none made landfall in the U.S., the Category 5 Hurricane Melissa tied with 1980’s Hurricane Allen for the strongest Atlantic Basin landfall by wind speed on record, causing widespread damage throughout the Caribbean.

While the season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30, now is the ideal time for families and businesses to review their policies with an insurance professional to ensure they have adequate coverage. Many may be unaware they need flood coverage, which is not part of a standard homeowners, condo, renters, or commercial property insurance policy. Flood policies are offered through FEMA’S National Flood Insurance Program and dozens of private insurers.

Homeowners can also upgrade their residences to voluntary standards for wind and heavy rain resilience, as modeled by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). Retrofitting roofs to IBHS FORTIFIED standards, for instance, has demonstrated success in reducing hurricane damage, prompting numerous state governments to begin providing premium discounts to policyholders with completed retrofits.

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Disaster Preparedness, Disaster Resilience, Flood Insurance, Floods, Homeowners Insurance

Flash Floods Set Records in 2025, Inland Risk Surges

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By Lewis Nibbelin, Research Writer, Triple-I

Deadly floods swept through the United States at a record pace in 2025, triggering more flash flood warnings than any year to date. With flood events in 99 percent of U.S. counties over the past 20 years, more communities are vulnerable to flooding than ever before, especially as exposure spreads increasingly inland.

Many homeowners, however, remain unprotected from the risk, underscoring a growing coverage gap as more people move into harm’s way. A new Triple-I Issues Brief explores the insurance industry’s role in closing that gap, as well as the public outreach and mitigation investment needed to reduce losses for all co-beneficiaries of flood resilience.

Extreme weather on the rise

Floods – alongside severe convective storms and wildfires – accounted for nearly all insured global losses last year, at $98 billion of $108 billion, according to Munich Re estimates. In the United States, inland flooding from both tropical and severe convective storms caused much of the devastation, led by the unprecedented Central Texas flood that claimed more than 130 lives.

Defined by NOAA as a rapid swing between two extreme environmental conditions, “weather whiplash” is becoming increasingly frequent in states like Texas and California, where prolonged droughts collide with periods of heavy rains and flooding, amplifying their effects. Fueled by increased tropical moisture from higher ocean temperatures, these drought-to-flood/hot-to-cold transitions drove many of the 21 billion-dollar severe convective storms in 2025, more than any prior year on record.

Flood market growth continues

Many homeowners remain unaware that a standard homeowners’ policy doesn’t cover flood damage or believe flood coverage is unnecessary unless their mortgage lender requires it. A separate 2023 study from Munich Re, in collaboration with Triple-I, found 64 percent of homeowners  believed they were not at risk for flooding. It also is not uncommon for homeowners to drop flood insurance coverage once their mortgage is paid off to save money.

Though more than half of all homeowners with flood insurance are covered by FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), federal regulations introduced in 2019 allowed mortgage lenders to accept private flood insurance if policies abided by regulatory definitions, steering a greater percentage of private insurers to the flood market. Between 2016 and 2024, the total flood market grew by nearly 43 percent – from $3.29 billion in direct premiums written to $4.7 billion – with 79 private companies writing just over 27 percent of the business.

Public-private partnerships are crucial

Comprehensive flood protection, however, entails more than adequate coverage. A joint study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Allstate found every dollar invested in disaster resilience can save up to $33 in avoided economic costs down the line. The study emphasized the need for collective action at all levels – individual, commercial, and government – to minimize climate and weather losses.

The NFIP’s Community Rating System (CRS) is one such collaboration, which rewards homeowners with premium discounts of up to 45 percent when their communities invest in floodplain management practices exceeding the organization’s minimum standards. By incentivizing improved building codes, citizen awareness campaigns, and other mitigation initiatives, the CRS can strengthen at-risk areas while offering relief where still needed after the cancellation of programs like FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC).

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Catastrophes, Coastal Property, Disaster Preparedness, Disaster Resilience, Floods, Severe Convective Storm, Technology, Tornado, Wildfire, Wind

Climate Nonprofits Take Responsibility for Terminated U.S. Databases

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By Lewis Nibbelin, Research Writer, Triple-I 

Amid federal funding and staffing cuts to major science agencies last year, various nonprofit organizations stepped up to maintain their essential climate and weather research. Such risks may become increasingly difficult to predict and prevent, however, as key agencies, such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), remain targets for disinvestment or termination.

Private sector takes charge

In the spring of 2025, the federal administration attempted to rescind tens of billions of dollars in research and hazard mitigation grants, leaving many programs – like FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program – in legal limbo as legislators continue to debate their futures. Alongside funding delays and cancellations, mass firings led to the shuttering of several climate and weather information resources – until private associations and researchers mobilized to revive them.

Former NOAA staffers, for instance, regrouped to rescue the organization’s climate.gov website, which attracted nearly one million visitors per month – including teachers, policymakers, and media outlets – before being dismantled last June. Under a new domain, the site will both restore deleted information and resume tracking and explaining the effects of climate risk to public audiences, relying exclusively on nonprofit funding, according to project director Rebecca Lindsey in an interview with NPR.

Similarly, nonprofit Climate Central recently released its first billion-dollar weather and climate disaster report since assuming responsibility for that dataset, which former NOAA climatologist Adam Smith continues to oversee. Beyond rebuilding NOAA’s database, the organization aims to expand upon it in the coming years to track smaller catastrophes, providing insurers and other stakeholders more reliable information to understand individual disasters.

An initiative spearheaded by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) is now aiming to help fill research gaps left by the elimination of the National Climate Assessment (NCA), a series of congressionally mandated reports published since 2000 to inform climate risk mitigation strategies for municipalities and businesses. Though not intended to replace NCA, the new data collection “provides a critical pathway for a wide range of researchers to come together and provide the science needed” to “ensure our communities, our neighbors, our children are all protected and prepared,” said AGU president Brandon Jones.

Grassroots efforts to archive federal climate databases and tools before they disappear have also gained traction around the globe to ensure these resources remain publicly available. The nonprofit Open Environmental Data Project, for example, saved a now-deleted tool to identify communities disproportionately impacted by climate and weather risks through its Public Environmental Data Project.

Crucial agencies under scrutiny

While the latest government spending package has largely spared science funding from further reductions, the Trump administration had proposed cuts amounting to a 21 percent drop from fiscal 2025 levels. Other agencies face potential dissolution, particularly NCAR – widely considered the largest federal climate research program in the U.S.

Managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in collaboration with the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR houses advanced computing and modeling systems to support weather forecasts, mitigation planning, flood mapping, and other datasets needed across the transportation, engineering, utility, and risk and insurance industries.

Describing NCAR’s research as critical to “protecting lives and property, supporting the economy, and strengthening national security,” UCAR president Antonio Busalacchi said in a statement that “any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters.”

“NCAR datasets have been vital in improving our understanding of the atmosphere and ocean,” said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of Colorado State University’s seasonal hurricane forecasts and Triple-I Non-Resident Scholar. “These tools have been critical input to CSU’s seasonal hurricane forecasts for over 25 years.”

NCAR’s pending fate coincides with a recent study from the University of Florida that suggests the budget cuts in part reflect pervasive distrust in scientific institutions, necessitating stronger efforts to communicate the value of scientific work to the public. But as more independent groups take on the responsibilities once affiliated with federal organizations, building public relationships may prove even more challenging, posing uncertain implications for the future of climate and weather data as a whole.

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Few, High-Powered Storms Defined 2025 Hurricane Season

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By Lewis Nibbelin, Research Writer, Triple-I

Though producing no U.S. landfalls for the first time in a decade, the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season generated deadly tropical storms, above-average days of major hurricane activity, and millions in economic losses, underscoring the enduring community preparedness required against this evolving peril.

Among the five hurricanes that did form, four reached Category 3 strength or higher, including three Category 5 storms – marking only the second year on record that more than two such storms occurred in the Atlantic. A new Triple-I Issues Brief examines their impacts and how they align with emerging climate and weather trends, particularly within inland areas hit by flooding from remnants of the storms.

Flood exposure spreads inland

While not to the scale of U.S. hurricanes in 2024, the year’s tropical storms were similarly destructive, with remnant moisture from Tropical Storm Chantal contributing to $500 million in damage, Gallagher Re estimates. In many affected North Carolina counties, less than 1 percent of households were covered by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), highlighting a growing flood protection gap in areas once considered low-risk.

Demographic shifts also play a crucial role in the devastation as more people move into harm’s way and build their homes bigger and more expensive than before. While various flood-prone areas along the coasts lost more residents than they gained in 2024 – for the first time since 2019 – it is critical to remind home and business owners about rising flood risks throughout the country and the importance of staying protected.

Stronger, wetter weather

Warming oceans also fuel “rapid intensification,” or an increase in maximum sustained winds by at least 35 mph in a 24-hour period. Since 1980, over 80 percent of landfalling U.S. hurricanes – altogether costing at least $5 billion in damages – underwent rapid intensification at some point during their lifecycle, according to a 2025 American Geophysical Union (AGU) study.

Describing rapid intensification events as “a pronounced increasing trend,” AGU study coauthor Dr. Phil Klotzbach – a senior research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University and Triple-I non-resident scholar – said such storms “tend to weaken at a slower rate as they move inland,” compounding challenges for residents who “aren’t necessarily as prepared as they should be.”

Hurricane Melissa – 2025’s strongest and deadliest storm – showcased the toll from this mounting intensity. Claiming more than 100 lives across the Caribbean, Melissa rapidly intensified before hitting Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane, becoming one of the fastest-intensifying Atlantic storms ever recorded and the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in the country’s history.

Cutting-edge analytics

As advances in computing power and data collection have improved traditional tools in recent years, forecasters and insurers have built up their arsenal to combat the unpredictability of climate and weather risks. For instance, barometric pressure – found both more accurate and easier to gauge than the wind speeds traditionally used to predict storm damage – served as the primary trigger for a  $150 million parametric policy for Jamaica which paid out in full after Hurricane Melissa.

“Displaying the kind of predictive power that can help insurers price risk and mitigate costly claims, these technologies can inform conversations at all levels to encourage investment in resilience,” the brief states.

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Storms Slam California, Raising Mudslide Risk

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By Lewis Nibbelin, Research Writer, Triple-I

An atmospheric river system dumped up to six inches of heavy rains and claimed multiple lives in California last weekend, with thunderstorms on the horizon posing outsized risks for communities still recovering from January’s devastating wildfires.

Triggering mudflows and flash flooding across streets and highways, the multiday storm highlights the added complexity of insuring and preventing disasters in the state’s many wildfire-prone areas.

Coverage confusion

Californians grappling with this destruction may be unaware that homeowners and commercial policies typically exclude flood, mudslide, debris flow, and similar catastrophes, or of the distinctions between these events. Though media outlets may use these terms interchangeably, insurers differentiate between mudflows and mudslides for coverage eligibility.

Essentially rivers of mud, mudflows are covered by flood insurance, which is available from FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and a growing number of private insurers. Mudslides – or masses of rock and earth pulled downhill by gravity – typically do not involve much liquid and remain ineligible for flood coverage.

But if recent perils covered by standard insurance policies either directly or indirectly cause any of these events, insurers must cover ensuing damages, as explained in a notice from California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara shortly before the storms. Such protections can help residents bracing for possible mudslides later this week – particularly those living in Southern California neighborhoods scorched by wildfires earlier this year.

Noting that “it is critical to prepare for flooding, mud, and debris flow when heavy wind and rain, also called atmospheric rivers, are forecast,” Janet Ruiz – Triple-I’s California-based director of strategic communication – advises policyholders to “check your insurance coverage, as you will need a separate flood policy for flooding and mudflow. Use sandbags – most communities provide them free of charge. Be safe, and don’t drive into flooded areas.”

These recommendations are especially vital for fire-scarred areas, where heat-damaged soil repels water and even minor showers can escalate into dangerous flash flooding and debris flows. An absence of vegetation to absorb rain exacerbates both, leaving nearby homes, businesses, and other infrastructure more vulnerable.

From one system to another

Beyond facilitating substantial flooding, the wet weather also weakened elevated fire conditions that emerged during the fall – a reoccurring interplay in California’s climate that complicates developing effective mitigation and resilience strategies. Within the Golden State alone, factors like temperature, humidity, wind, and topography vary too widely to apply a singular mitigation approach, underscoring the importance of property-specific data analysis.

Using case studies from three distinct California areas, research from Triple-I and Guidewire shows how granular data can help identify properties with attractive risk profiles despite these evolving risks. Noting “every property being assessed for wildfire risk is unique,” their report found that home hardening reduces wildfire damage by as much as 70 percent but emphasized proactive collaboration between insurers, regulators, and policyholders as key to long-term success.

With more people moving into the wildland urban interface and communities increasingly hit with inland flooding, such partnerships are crucial to bridge protection gaps while keeping insurance affordable and available.

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Resilience Investment Payoffs Outpace Future Costs More Than 30 Times

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By Lewis Nibbelin, Contributing Writer, Triple-I

Every dollar invested in disaster resilience today can save communities up to $33 in avoided economic costs, according to new research from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Allstate, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Building on their 2024 finding that such investments save $13 in benefits, the report detailed the burgeoning toll of increasingly frequent and severe natural catastrophes across the United States, underscoring a need for stronger collective action to mitigate climate risk.

Invest Now, Save Later

After experiencing the fifth consecutive year of 18 or more billion-dollar disasters in 2024, the United States further drove the second costliest half-year ever for global insured losses from natural catastrophes in 2025 with January’s devastating wildfires in Southern California. Though reflecting a troubling “new normal,” the report demonstrates how resilience funding can help stabilize local economies and protect lives and jobs, regardless of the scale or type of disaster.

Modeling scenarios for five disaster types – hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, droughts, and floods – the study revealed that high resilience investments may cut GDP losses by billions, with reduced funding leading to significantly higher long-term costs across all scenarios.

For hurricane-prone areas, which can grapple with lasting disruptions to housing, education, and other basic infrastructure, the study noted that higher investment could prevent the loss of $13.2 billion and more than 70,000 jobs.

Emphasizing the “smart, cost-saving” efficacy of disaster mitigation, the report concluded that “preparedness is not just a safety measure – it’s a local economic development strategy.”

“Preparedness is as much about plans as it is people,” added Rich Loconte, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for government and industry relations at Allstate. “It’s supporting a local nonprofit to retain its employees and keeps its doors open after a disaster, working with civic leaders to develop recovery plans that minimize rebuilding costs, and educating community members on proactive investments that help better weather storms.”

Risk Reduction in Practice

Beyond identifying the broad impact of disaster preparedness, the report also provides actionable insights for local leaders who aim to boost community resilience but are unsure where or how to start. Recommendations for disaster preparation include:

  • Risk-Informed Design: Adopt and enforce hazard-resistant building codes, such as those that meet the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety’s FORTIFIED standards. Update zoning and land use planning according to the latest risk data.
  • Data-Based Decisions: Improve access to risk data to inform, track, and assess the success of disaster mitigation efforts.
  • Dedicated Resilience Funding:Create a local fund for disaster mitigation to ensure consistent investment and expedite post-disaster recovery.
  • Public Engagement: Launch risk awareness campaigns to facilitate individual and organized participation in preparedness and raise insurance take-up rates.
  • Stakeholder Partnerships: Coordinate cross-sector and multi-jurisdictional resilience strategies to maximize benefits.

A survey released in tandem with the report shows that most resilience stakeholders – encompassing emergency managers, community planners, government officials, and other risk experts –  believe public-private collaboration needs improvement, with more than half of respondents highlighting insufficient resource allocation and unclear decision-making processes as leading causes for poor coordination.

While most indicated state and local governments must play a major role in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery, 58 percent of respondents additionally underscored the federal government as crucial at every phase, particularly for financial assistance. As numerous community resilience projects hang in limbo following the Trump Administration’s cancellation of $882 million in federal grants, it is imperative for all beneficiaries of disaster resilience to help develop sensible solutions for predicting and preventing losses.

“As the cost and economic toll of disasters continue to increase, leaders at all levels of government should know that investments in infrastructure resilience will go a long way in protecting and preparing local communities,” said Marty Durbin, senior vice president of policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Resilience investments reduce costs and speed up recovery. The faster a community bounces back, the faster jobs and economic growth return.”

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ClimateTech Connect NYC: You Just Had to Be There

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I wrapped up my first-ever Climate Week NYC last week at ClimateTech Connect. After their two-day April event in Washington, D.C., I could hardly miss this special half-day update when it was so close to home.

Fifty-plus attendees crammed a room near Grand Central Station, and I immediately spotted familiar faces and had the opportunity to meet with a mix of industry veterans and relative newbies spanning all insurance disciplines, from underwriting and claims to the cutting edge of modeling and artificial intelligence. Top insurance thought leaders and influencers were there to speak on climate-related issues of pressing interest to my industry and everyone it serves. The panel themes and the panelist themselves made it clear from the start that a blog post was not going to do the event justice.

The first panel – Pioneers Shaping the Future of Climate Resilience – was moderated by Francis Bouchard, managing director for climate at Marsh McLennan, whose bona fides include senior positions with Zurich Insurance and the Reinsurance Association of America. Francis moderated a no-holds-barred panel of young insurance leaders: Angela Grant at Palomar, Michael Gulla of Adaptive Insurance, and Valkyrie Holmes of Faura. The energy and expertise of these panelists left me feeling that the industry – in the face of myriad challenges – is being put into good hands.

The next discussion was moderated by Jerry Theodorou, a director at the R Street Institute whose professional background includes roles at Conning, AIG, and Chubb. It featured Dan Kaniewski, managing director and U.S. public sector lead for Marsh McLennan and a former FEMA deputy administrator, and Raghuveer Vinukollu, head of climate insights and advisory for Munich Re. The depth and timeliness of these three experts’ insights made for an engaging and thought-provoking session.

The third panel was both engaging and accessible – a bit surprising to me, given that it consisted entirely of PhDs. Steve Weinstein, CEO of Mangrove Property Insurance led a discussion among Joanna Syroka of Fermat Capital Management, Catherine Ansell of JPMorgan Chase, and M. Cameron Rencurrel at Mercury Insurance on not only “Why Science Needs to Be in the Boardroom,” but HOW young scientists can find their way there and decide IF that’s where they want to be.

Between these panels were presentations from representatives of several insurtechs who shared their data-driven solutions focused on understanding and addressing climate-related panels. All this in a period of about three hours (not including the networking reception afterward). Despite all the information shared, the event did not feel at all rushed.

If you weren’t able to make it and are feeling a bit left out, don’t fret! ClimateTech Connect 2026 will be held in Washington, D.C., on April 8 and 9, 2026.

Catastrophes, Coastal Property, Disaster Preparedness, Disaster Resilience, Flood Insurance, Floods, Homeowners Insurance, Hurricane, Lightning, Market Conditions, Severe Convective Storm, Technology, Wildfire, Wind

Nonprofit to Rescue NOAA Billion-Dollar Dataset

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A climate nonprofit plans to revive a key federal database tracking billion-dollar weather and climate disasters that the Trump Administration stopped updating in May, Bloomberg reported.

The database captures the financial toll of increasingly intense weather events and was used by insurers and others to understand, model, and predict weather perils across the United States. Dr. Adam B. Smith, the former NOAA climatologist who spearheaded the database for more than a decade, has been hired to manage it for the nonprofit, Climate Central.

NOAA in May announced it would stop tracking the cost of the country’s most expensive disasters, those which cause at least $1 billion in damage – a move that would leave insurers, researchers, and government policymakers with less reliable information to help understand the patterns of major disasters like hurricanes, drought or wildfires, and their economic consequences.

Climate Central plans to expand beyond the database’s original scope by tracking disasters as small as $100 million and calculating losses from individual wildfires, rather than simply reporting seasonal regional totals.

A record 28 billion-dollar disasters hit the United States in 2023, including a drought that caused $14.8 billion in damages. In 2024, 27 incidents of that scale occurred. Since 1980, an average of nine such events have struck in the United States annually.

This summer – amid deadly wildfires and floods – the Trump Administration has appeared to be rolling back some of its DOGE-driven NOAA funding cuts. NOAA recently announced that it would be hiring 450 meteorologists, hydrologists, and radar technicians for the National Weather Service (NWS), after having terminated over 550 such positions in the already-understaffed agency in the spring.

In addition, the administration’s announced termination of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program — run by the  Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — has been held up by a court injunction while legislators debate its future.  Congress established BRIC through the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 to ensure a stable funding source to support mitigation projects annually. The program has allocated more than $5 billion for investment in mitigation projects to alleviate human suffering and avoid economic losses from floods, wildfires, and other disasters.

Regarding the rescue of the NOAA dataset, Colorado State University researcher and Triple-I non-resident scholar Dr. Phil Klotzbach said, “The billion-dollar disaster dataset is important for those of us working to better understand the impacts of tropical cyclones. It uses a consistent methodology to estimate damage caused by natural disasters from 1980 to the present and was a critical input to our papers investigating the relationship between landfalling wind, pressure and damage. I’m very happy to hear that this dataset will continue!”

Learn More:

Some Weather Service Jobs Being Restored; BRIC Still Being Litigated

2025 Cat Losses to Date Are 2nd-Costliest Since Records Have Been Kept

CSU Sticks to Hurricane Season Forecast, Warns About Near-Term Activity

Russia Quake Highlights Unpredictability of Natural Catastrophes

Texas: A Microcosm of U.S. Climate Perils

Louisiana Senator Seeks Resumption of Resilience Investment Program

BRIC Funding Loss Underscores Need for Collective Action on Climate Resilience

JIF 2025: Federal Cuts Imperil Resilience Efforts