Global value chains that have adopted centralized structures to take advantage of economies of scale can be particularly vulnerable to disruptions like severe natural hazards, since a disaster in one critical location can quickly reverberate throughout the entire value chain. While some companies today do provide climate risk and resilience assessments, the industry needs to become much more widespread to address the needs of businesses and municipalities around the world. The objective of this impact pathway is to accelerate the rate at which climate risk and resilience planning becomes sufficiently widespread to meet this need by addressing technical challenges that inhibit progress towards this goal.
This pathway has three focus areas which are each challenges that inhibit widespread climate risk analysis and resilience planning that the consortium is focused on addressing: 1) how to improve projections of environmental risk levels, 2) how to improve the estimate of the impact a given natural hazard would have on the value chain with and without adaptation, and 3) how to design and evaluate adaptation strategies against each other.
MIT faculty members, researchers, and students interested in this impact area: we’ve got all kinds of ways for you to work with us and our member companies.