One Concern, Inc., and global flood risk specialist Fathom are partnering to develop a state-of-the-art flood model for Japan that accounts for future changes in pluvial, fluvial and sea level for RCP 4.5.
The partnership demonstrates a new approach to modeling flood risk for low and high-frequency events, and will enable organisations to access a broad range of actionable data sets around flood risk scenarios to identify, model, and build resilience to increasingly frequent and severe climate threats.
Fathom will provide One Concern with flood hazard data, including flood data for present-day and future climate data scenarios, to build Resilience-as-a-Service solutions for Japan. One Concern offers climate modeling, including flood predictions, that enables decision-makers to understand the vulnerabilities facing communities and organizations.
Fathom’s model uses data from the Global Hydrodynamics Lab, which is part of the U-Tokyo Global Hydrology Group in the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo. This is part of a long-standing relationship that Fathom has with researchers from the University of Tokyo, including Dai Yamazaki, with whom they have co-authored numerous hydrological papers. The incorporation of Yamazaki’s Flow Direction Map within the model is a further example of this long-standing and collaborative partnership.
The modeling data, deployed within Fathom, covers the whole of Japan and offers flood hazard data for both inland and coastal perils. Building on Japan’s extensive network of river gauges, Fathom combines industry-leading, aggregated historic flood hazard data with advanced, in-house proprietary technologies. This includes the firm’s market-leading defense algorithm and datasets, which enable users to understand where flood defenses exist and their impact, while factoring in levels of urbanization to provide bespoke modeling. Given that Japan has some of the most heavily engineered and technologically-driven cities in the world, with a multitude of underlying networks of dependencies and infrastructure, these approaches are a crucial component to building communities resilient to flood risk.
One Concern’s Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Nicole Hu said: “We are proud to partner with Fathom to expand upon their flood modeling expertise as we look to enable organizations and communities across Japan to build resilience to escalating climate threats, especially flood risk, as the world experiences rising sea levels and more volatile weather conditions. As our flood modeling partner for Japan, Fathom’s ability to provide the most comprehensive view of flood and other climate hazards enhances One Concern’s ability to reduce uncertainty for decision-makers as they work towards understanding and preparing for their climate risk exposure.”
Fathom’s flood hazard data is a culmination of decades of peer-reviewed research, industry leadership and collaboration with universities. These academic partnerships have provided continuous validation to Fathom’s unique flood modeling techniques. A recent paper published in Water Resource Research assessed the methodologies underpinning Fathom’s data and found significant improvement across the model’s ability to simulate regular coastal area activity and high-frequency events, demonstrating enhanced functionality and sophistication within Fathom’s modeling approach.
Fathom CEO, Stuart Whitfield said: “We launched our partnership to provide critical insights for One Concern’s AI-enabled resilience solutions and disaster-risk mitigation technologies, and we see this collaboration as vital to enabling public and private sector decision-makers to understand and prepare for climate threats. With the unrivaled abilities of our flood methodologies to understand and manage flood risk, we are eager to support One Concern’s mission to make disasters less disastrous.”
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