"It provides a foundation for lenders to make decisions with a greater understanding of the ground and issues that can affect the value of the property they are lending against"
The National Ground Risk Model (NGRM): Climate includes the UK’s first ever map of ground risk data, enabling lenders to understand the risk to the properties they lend against as the climate changes.
It will also enable lenders to meet the demands of the Bank of England and the PRS under its 2021 Biennial Exploratory Scenarios (BES) to understand climate-related financial risks. The objective of the BES is to test the resilience of banks, insurers and the financial system to different climate pathways, which lenders need to prepare for by June 2021.
NGRM: Climate provides a model of how ground risk will change in low, medium and high emission scenarios in the short-term (2020-2040), medium-term (2040-2060) and long-term (2060-2080).
NGRM: Climate has been developed by geologists, soil scientists, engineers and geospatial data. It combines geological, soils, mining, coastal erosion, landslide and climate data with nine of the Met Office’s UK Climate Projections (UKCP18) emissions scenarios and provides a risk score. It also includes a new coastal hazards model, which illustrates the projected impacts of rising sea levels and increased erosion on coastal property and land.
Lenders, insurance firms and property developers can now instantly access ground risk information on all 29 million properties, 50 million structures and 30 million land parcels in the UK. This provides a proven baseline to understand how ground risk can impact property.
Tom Backhouse, CEO and founder of Terrafirma, said: “The release of the NGRM: Climate is a game-changer for understanding ground risk. It dramatically improves the quality, availability and accessibility of ground hazard and risk information for lenders.
“Across the UK, homes, infrastructure and land are at risk from complex ground hazards that can remain hidden for years. Every day decisions worth millions of pounds are being made without true understanding of the consequences of these hazards, so Terrafirma set out to improve understanding of the ground and the complex ways it interacts with the built environment.
“We have worked on NGRM: Climate for 18months to provide the first commercial model of its kind. The model has been engineered by geologists, soil scientists and geospatial data experts. It provides a foundation for lenders to make decisions with a greater understanding of the ground and issues that can affect the value of the property they are lending against, in a manner that is easy to understand. This will help them to make informed decisions without needed to be ground risk specialists themselves.”
