The REACHOUT focus on the financial sector will center on improving physical climate risk assessment data and methodologies for real assets, specifically real estate. APG is a Dutch pension investor and their Global Responsible Investment & Governance team integrates climate risk information into investment analysis. An increasing volume of methodologies and climate data sets with specific assumptions and methodological choices are becoming available. As these data sets influence investment decisions, APG is looking for a more thorough understanding of the data and underlying science. Incompatibility of data types (physical risk score vs. financial assets) and (spatial) accuracy are APG’s main concerns. APG manages assets in (the surrounding of) four of the seven REACHOUT city hubs, namely Amsterdam, Milan, Lillestrøm and Gdynia. 

APG hopes to gain a better understanding of the quality, availability and compatibility of climate data for climate risk assessments. This will provide insight in the accuracy and useability of top-down products of commercial data providers and open data from EU and national sources. Furthermore, this information can improve the scalability of climate risk assessments, both spatially and across asset classes.  

APG wants to focus on upscaling of climate risk assessments for real estate assets in REACHOUT city hubs in the context of flood risk, eventually comparing REACHOUT tools using EU open data with assessments done by commercial data provider and providing a feasibility study on whether it is possible to reach a pan-EU standard approach for climate risk assessments.  

Any level of improved accuracy of the current data would mean great progress, but key success of the climate services produced in this project for APG would lie in scalability of risk assessments in two different ways:  

• Spatially: learn from in-depth city approaches and apply on assets globally 

• Across asset class: from real estate, to infrastructure/NRF or company equities