Climate and Natural Hazard Risk Assessments

Climate and natural hazard risk assessments evaluate a port's exposure to climate change and natural hazards to inform adaptation, mitigation, and long-term planning (TCFD, 2017). This may include, among others, scenario analysis of sea level rise, storms, flooding, and heat; assessment of transition risks (policy, technology, market changes); vulnerability assessments of critical infrastructure; integration with TCFD and ISSB aligned disclosures; identification of material climate risks; and use of regional climate data and projections.

For DMC ports, climate risk assessment is particularly material given the high exposure of many DMCs to sea level rise, tropical cyclones and extreme rainfall, and of others to heat extremes and water scarcity. Quantitative climate risk assessment can support climate resilient infrastructure planning, reduce vulnerability to extreme events, protect supply chains and operations, and enable transparent climate reporting aligned with global sustainability frameworks (IFRS Foundation, 2023).

Climate risk assessment provides a structured evaluation of the physical and transition risks that climate change may pose to port operations, infrastructure, finances, and supply chains. Physical climate risks include acute events (storms, floods, extreme heat) and chronic changes (sea level rise, changing precipitation patterns, ocean acidification). Transition risks arise from policy changes, technology shifts, market changes, and reputational factors associated with the transition to a lower carbon economy (TCFD, 2017).

The TCFD recommendations, adopted by many international regulators and integrated into the IFRS S2 standard issued by the ISSB in June 2023, where adopted require organizations to disclose climate related risks across four pillars: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets (IFRS Foundation, 2023). Strategy disclosures include description of climate related risks and opportunities, their impact on the organization's business model and strategy, and the resilience of the strategy under different climate scenarios, with the TCFD recommending that these include a 2 degrees Celsius or lower scenario and IFRS S2 requiring disclosure of whether a scenario aligned with the latest international agreement on climate change was used.

Climate risk assessments for ports typically encompass, among others, vulnerability mapping of critical infrastructure, scenario analysis of sea level rise impacts on wharf elevations and port flooding, evaluation of storm surge and extreme wave impacts, assessment of heat stress impacts on equipment and workforce, and analysis of rainfall and drainage capacity under future climate conditions.

Research published in Communications Earth & Environment estimates that port specific risk from multiple natural hazards, covering physical asset damages and logistics losses, totals USD 7.5 billion per year globally, with trade risk as a fraction of total trade particularly high in Small Island Developing States (Verschuur et al., 2023).

Peer reviewed research in Earth's Future has evaluated implemented climate adaptation at 13 of the largest commercial ports in the UK, finding that the largest number of documented adaptation actions responded to storms, flooding and sea level rise, and identifying a need for more systematic and integrated consideration of short- and longer-term climate risks (Jenkins et al., 2025).

A quantitative flood risk assessment of the Port of Rotterdam under the EU ENHANCE project estimated expected annual direct losses of about EUR 5.8 million per year in 2015, rising to up to EUR 67 million per year in 2100 (ENHANCE Project, n.d.).

Westports Holdings, operator of Port Klang in Malaysia, reported in its Sustainability Report 2022 on a Climate Change Assessment Report prepared by DHI-Ekomar (UKM), which evaluated temperature, rainfall, wind, waves, currents and water levels (Westports, 2022).

Third party climate risk analytics platforms, provide quantitative physical climate risk assessments that can support port climate risk assessment. For DMC ports, regional climate projections from national meteorological agencies provide baseline data for scenario analysis.