The extended session on “Future-proof Real Estate Investment” captured the tension. Real estate in OECD countries alone is worth more than one hundred trillion US dollars. It is both a driver of emissions and one of the asset classes most exposed to heatwaves, floods, storms and subsidence.

A clear message in Paris was that climate risk needs to run through the entire asset life cycle: site selection, due diligence, financing, capital expenditure planning, asset management and exit. It is no longer enough to ask whether a building looks “green” on paper. The real question is how that building behaves in the fifth heatwave of the year, or in the next 50 year return period flood event. The discussion moved quickly from theory to practice. Valuation standards, risk models and investment strategies need to reflect not only current hazard, but also how climate change impacts real estate in the future under different emission scenarios.

The following images display screenshots from the Climate Financial Impact Edition of Location Risk Intelligence, which helps organisations to integrate climate-related financial risk data into their business processes and decisions. It visualizes projections for subsidence, the hazard of gradual sinking or sudden collapse of the ground, for 2050 and 2100 under SSP5-/ RCP8.5 scenarios (undefended) in Paris. While the risk stays “high” until 2050, it even jumps to “very high” in 2100 projections.

One theme surfaced repeatedly: Institutions have more climate data than ever before, yet decision makers still struggle to turn it into concrete action.

Real estate investors and asset managers described platforms full of maps, hazard scores and scenarios. At the same time, investment committees still asked fundamental questions: Which assets are genuinely at risk? What is material at portfolio level? Which adaptation measures alter the risk profile, and by how much?

This is exactly the gap where we can contribute. Location Risk Intelligence connects hazard scores to expected losses, and it does this across entire portfolios and at asset level. Our example shows the Climate Expected Loss due to tropical cyclone events for a 10,000 asset banking portfolio in the US. Climate Expected Loss is the average annual loss, i.e. annualised expected loss, due to physical damage to buildings and their contents, measured in per mille [‰].

The broader forum agenda looked at how regulation can unlock capital for mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity. In the real estate panel, the message was sharper: regulation isn't about ticking boxes. It's a catalyst that forces institutions to get their risk, finance and sustainability teams working from the same data and speaking the same language.

Regulators are becoming increasingly clear that organisations must address physical risks. For insurers and reinsurers, this is familiar ground – catastrophe models have always been part of pricing and portfolio management. What's changed is the expectation that this expertise now needs to flow into real estate valuations, bank risk models and corporate planning.