What is CLIMADA?

With accurate and reliable data on climate-related risks becoming increasingly important, CLIMADA provides a robust analysis of the cost and benefits of adaptation measures and allows informed resilience investments into adaptation and disaster risk reduction. CLIMADA is an open-source quantitative modelling tool used by ECA to conduct risk assessments. It is a mathematical model written in two different scripting languages, MATLAB and Python.

CLIMADA constitutes a platform to analyse risks of different hazard types (floods, tropical cyclones, droughts, etc.) in a globally, regionally and locally consistent fashion at different resolution levels, at scales from multiple kilometres down to meters, depending on the purpose.

Starting from a comprehensive mapping of hazards, exposed assets and people and their specific vulnerability, CLIMADA implements state-of-the-art probabilistic risk modelling techniques (i.e. Monte Carlo simulations) to integrate different economic development and climate impact scenarios. CLIMADA operates in a globally consistent fashion at high resolution (10 km) as well as in local applications at highest resolutions (100 m) and provides spatially explicit estimates of multi-hazard risk both today and under future projections.

CLIMADA allows to assess a comprehensive portfolio of adaptation measures, quantifying the damage aversion potential and cost-benefit ratio for each measure. This way, CLIMADA has been applied in more than twenty climate adaptation studies worldwide, where it served as a solid underpinning to engage with stakeholders during all stages of these projects, in particular to deal with – and communicate – uncertainties.

CLIMADA is developed in different programming languages, namely Python, OCTAVE and MATLAB. The fact that CLIMADA is open source and access proved essential to build trust into the outcomes by all stakeholders involved.