How can I understand and assess the socio-economic and biophysical area where NBS will be implemented?

Overview

This is the entry point to the methods and tools that describe an area and the ecosystem services it provides, before any question of cost, benefit or investment is raised. It brings together the mapping and modelling approaches used in NAIAD to establish what is physically present, what it delivers to society and the economy, and how much of that delivery is relevant to insurance.

What the tools do

At the broadest level, satellite-supported mapping establishes the physical potential for hazards across a region, and a parallel mapping establishes the socio-economic exposure that sits within it. These are screening instruments: they work at large extent and moderate resolution, they need no local survey, and their value is in showing where a more detailed assessment is worth its cost.

A third mapping layer identifies the natural capital that matters to insurance — the ecosystems whose condition changes the probability or the severity of a loss — and the co-benefits that the same ecosystems deliver alongside that risk reduction. A fourth modelling layer quantifies the ecosystem services themselves, so that a change in land management or in the condition of a water body can be translated into a change in what the ecosystem delivers.

The Eco:Actuary policy support system draws these layers together into a single assessment of the role of natural flood management in flood mitigation. It maps hazard, exposure, loss, mitigation and avoided loss for the current natural capital of a catchment, and repeats the calculation for scenarios of climate change and of Nature Based Solution investment, so that the effect of an intervention and the effect of a changing climate can be compared on the same basis.

How to choose between them

The tools differ in the question they answer, the data they require and the time they take, and choosing among them is a decision about the decision being supported rather than about technical superiority. A regional screening to identify candidate catchments needs a different instrument from an appraisal of a specific intervention, and an assessment intended to support an insurance transaction needs a different level of evidence again. The guidelines set out the sequence in which the layers are normally applied and the point at which each becomes necessary.

Where to start

For a first orientation, the classification scheme for Nature Based Solution selection processes sets out how a solution is matched to a setting. For an assessment of a specific area, the Eco:Actuary policy support system and its guidelines are the operational route, and they are supported by training material that takes a user through a baseline assessment, a climate change scenario and a land use scenario without requiring an in-house modelling team.