Climate extremes and weather-related disasters displaced millions, killed thousands, and cost billions in Asia every year.
While the land surface air temperature in Asia has risen substantially more than the global average, the annual precipitation totals in the South and East Asia Summer Monsoon regions were above normal in 2020, with the East Asia Summer Monsoon region reaching 190-200% of annual average precipitation. Due to changes in climatic conditions after industrialization, the likelihood of such events has increased five times under the present climate (1985-2019) compared to previous conditions (1960-1984).
Similarly, the long-term rates of sea level rise in the Asia-Pacific region are considerably higher as compared with the global average rise. Such conditions result in disproportionate impacts and climate risks in Asia, which potentially compromises environmental stability, economic growth, business continuity, and human development. Without rigorous action, the region could see an additional 7.5 million people fall into poverty due to climate impacts by 2030.
According to the World Risk Report 2022, 8 out of the top 10 most at-risk countries in the world are from Asia. The country with the highest disaster risk is the Philippines, followed by India, Indonesia, Myanmar, China, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
Informed planning and decision-making are imperative to reducing the vulnerabilities of communities as well as businesses to the devastating consequences of disasters and building resilience under climate change.
The example of South Korea reflects that lower vulnerabilities can significantly reduce the overall disaster risk even though the exposure to several climate-related hazards is higher (e.g., tropical cyclones). On the other hand, higher vulnerabilities can result in huge impacts and larger financial damages even with low-to-medium exposure levels.
Digitalization is proved to be very useful to reduce the expected impacts of climate change and related risks on communities and businesses. Precise global scale granular levels of data collection on different natural hazards (floods, extreme heat, tropical cyclones, drought, etc.) and its processing through state-of-the-art modeling techniques is essential to manage and adapt to climate change and intensifying disasters.
Once done for current climatic conditions, the further step is to project patterns of risks under future scenarios to provide location-intelligence-based intel to governments, communities, and businesses for effective strategies and actions beforehand.
Hazard-specific modeling through AI and deep machine learning-aided climate models at Intensel can provide precise solutions to reduce the likelihood of impacts and business discontinuity/disruption. This climate risk data should be integrated early on into short and long-term business plans in terms of business protection and insuring the assets in high-risk areas along with adapting to changing climatic conditions for a sustainable business.
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