Project Will Forecast Risks Due to Inundation Driven by Climate Change at Strategic Facility in the Micronesia Region
SAN MATEO, Calif., Feb. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Jupiter, the global leader in climate analytics for resilience and risk management, announced today that it has been selected along with BEM Systems to conduct a comprehensive study on behalf of the US Air Force. The new study will anticipate future sea level rise and flooding at Wake Island Airfield in the Micronesia Region of the Pacific Ocean. Having the data that this project will yield will enable the Air Force with strategic asset planning. With these data, the Air Force will be able to prepare for and mitigate anticipated consequences of severe weather events. Examples include “hardening” certain facilities at the airfield, or relocating facilities that are projected to be at risk from storm surge and flooding.
“The science of quantifying risk from climate change has matured, and at facilities like Wake Island we can accurately anticipate and mitigate risks from future storms in great detail,” said Rich Sorkin, CEO of Jupiter. “With the new Biden Administration, we expect that Jupiter’s work in the public sector will accelerate, and we look forward to a new era of government engagement.”
As part of the Wake Island project, Jupiter will develop a coupled hydrodynamic model to predict flooding from tropical storm surge and wave runup at Wake Island Airfield. The model’s projections of the changing Wake Island floodplain over time will allow the US Air Force to plan ahead of potentially dangerous conditions arising from climate change on both current and future facilities, allowing for resilience measures or infrastructure changes to be enacted.
“Much of the disruption we anticipate from climate change will occur within a 50-year time horizon, with some effects already being felt in the Pacific,” Sorkin said. “Just as the military is a driving force around the adoption of many of today’s technological advancements, we anticipate that the Air Force’s early adoption of climate analytics and resilience planning will be a model for other public- and private-sector institutions moving forward.”
Mark Nardolillo, the President and CEO of BEM Systems, noted, “the USAF, and specifically the PACAF Command, has been at the forefront of assessing the risks from climate change and developing appropriate long term resiliency plans. But environmental conditions have changed so drastically in the Pacific due to rising sea levels and atmospheric temperatures that the risks to these installations from cyclones is moving beyond the time available to respond to them in near-real time. The tools we are providing will provide the commanders with the best available information to make informed decisions under highly dynamic conditions.”
About Jupiter
Jupiter is the global leader in data and analytics services to make informed decisions to anticipate risk from extreme weather, sea-level rise, storm intensification and rising temperatures caused by short, medium and long-term climate change. Jupiter’s ClimateScoreTM Intelligence Platform provides sophisticated, dynamic, hyper-local, current- hour-to-50-plus-year probabilistic risk analysis for weather in a changing climate. The company’s FloodScore™, HeatScore™, WindScore™, FireScore™, and ClimateScore Global™ services are used for climate-related risk assessment and management worldwide. Jupiter’s models are based on the latest science, as developed by the global Earth and Ocean Systems science community.
Jupiter offers commercial services to asset owners in critical infrastructure, financial services including insurance, banking and asset management, energy and real estate, and the public
sector. These customers use Jupiter services for a broad range of applications, including capital planning, risk management, site selection, design requirements, supply chain management, investment and asset valuations, and shareholder disclosures. For more information, please visit jupiterintel.com.
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