New Resilience Tool, RiskFootprint, Gets Nod from USGBC

A comprehensive resilience assessment takes a lot of time and resources, requiring use of different tools and platforms to put together a full picture of the risks and their severity. Imagine if you could just type in an address and instantly receive a full resilience risk report for any property in the U.S.

That’s the promise of RiskFootprint, a tool developed by the company Coastal Risk Consulting. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) recently announced a partnership with the firm, saying the software would be integrated into LEED Online. (A USGBC spokesperson could not provide details about how the tool might be used to achieve LEED or RELi certification.)

RiskFootprint looks at 14 types of risk, including wildfire, pluvial (extreme rainfall) and fluvial (riverine) flooding, earthquakes, and wind, plus 2050 climate impacts like extreme heat, rainfall, and drought.

A LEED-certified building currently doesn’t have to take any of these risks into account, despite the fact that they threaten an asset’s durability and lifetime, pointed out Albert Slap, president of Coastal Risk Consulting. Demonstrating the software during an interview, he showed BuildingGreen a LEED Gold-certified building with significant heavy rainfall risks, poor drainage, riverine flood risks, and future climate change impacts that included extreme heat, extreme rainfall, and tidal flooding and sea-level rise. “This is a wonderful building with great things about it,” Slap said, but “it is ground zero for floods and heat and rainfall. When and where does that get factored in?” To fully understand a project’s sustainability, we need to stop looking only at what our buildings are doing to the planet, he said, and also start taking into account what the planet might do to our buildings.

The software and its pricing structure are designed primarily for real estate investment trusts (REITs) that need to analyze a full portfolio, but it’s also possible to get a one-off report for a single property for a few hundred dollars, according to Slap.

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For more information:

Coastal Risk Consulting
riskfootprint.com