But too often, use of these tools remains highly specialised and complex. In order to fulfil their potential, these developments must not be seen as the end product in themselves but as enablers allowing a greater connection between the physical and digital worlds.

Quicker decisions

With climate change at the forefront of the international agenda, flood risk assessment and risk management technologies are critical components of the disaster mitigation strategies of governments and international development banks for better forecasting, measuring and mitigating flooding across the world.

Bank of England advise how the insurance industry can tackle the financial impact of climate change

The Bank of England launched a report this year, ‘A framework for assessing financial impacts of physical climate change: a practitioner’s aide for the General Insurance Sector’, which urged insurers and reinsurers to integrate climate-related factors into financial decision making. Ambiental Risk Analytics contributed as part of a working group to the featured case studies in the report and is an established provider to the insurance sector of accurate, technological solutions for managing and pricing flood risk.

The questions a predictive flood model can answer

FloodFutures®, our predictive flood model helps understand and plan for long-term flood risk including the UK Climate Change Projections 2009 (which correlate to the EA February 2016, allowances). Our FloodFutures® dataset can help answer those difficult questions:

This image shows Fluvial 2017 vs 2080 High Emissions

Tools such as this not only harness the available data but also offer a user interface which enables operators to interpret and interact with the data. Our team of experts can support you in understanding what the flood models are demonstrating and assist in answering those difficult questions. There is also the ability to work with our developers and build platforms that work best for you, your sector and your individual needs.

Better predictions

The private sector in particular is seeing an explosion in the extent to which data can be leveraged to deliver faster, more accurate predictions. Our modelling software FlowRoute™ which has been used to generate the FloodFutures® data set has been validated by the Environment Agency. Through developing new data sets with the aid of technology, Ambiental has the ability to help our clients make informed decisions.

The models have been primarily used by the insurance industry to assess risk but are now coming into their own as a decision support for other users, such as development and planning, utility providers (water/gas/electricity), large commercial entities, asset managers etc. All of which might need to consider whether their land or portfolio of stock could be exposed to flood risk not just today but into the future. Our models can predict flooding under climate change and the impacts it could have across the UK in the near- or medium-term future.

Ambiental is pioneering novel approaches to extract meaning from complex data and has been developing digital systems which can deliver actionable intelligence through using highly automated workflows. For example, we are at the forefront of using Artificial Intelligence to extract meaning from real time data as well as enabling us to calibrate and validate our flood models more efficiently. Our focus on creating technology driven solutions is delivering excellent returns on investment to our clients through reducing their operational overheads, such as the need for specialist training and manual processing of data in order to derive insight.