As our changing climate increases pressure on vital infrastructure, decision makers need trusted data to plan for the future. JBA’s Global Flood Maps and climate change scenarios provide the foundation for resilient investment and long-term asset protection worldwide.
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Critical infrastructure networks, from energy and transport to water and communications, are increasingly exposed to natural hazards and the impacts of climate change. Operators and governments need robust data to understand where their assets are at risk and to plan investments that protect vital services for millions of people.
JBA’s Global Flood Maps, together with our climate change flood data, provide a consistent dataset for resilience planning. This enables infrastructure owners, consultants, and development banks to integrate both current and future flood hazard into their projects, even in locations where local data is limited.
Infrastructure networks often span thousands of assets across entire countries. For example, a transmission company may operate towers, substations, and lines in both densely populated urban areas and remote rural regions. In many countries, detailed local flood studies exist only for major cities or river basins, leaving large areas unassessed.
This lack of comprehensive data creates blind spots for risk management. Without knowing which assets are exposed to flooding, it is difficult to prioritise investment or to safeguard critical infrastructure. JBA’s Global Flood Maps fill this gap by offering consistent, transparent, and country-wide flood hazard information at multiple return periods, enabling rapid identification of hotspots and targeted follow-up analysis.
Infrastructure projects need to be resilient not only to today’s hazards but also to how those hazards may change over time. Climate change is altering rainfall patterns, increasing the likelihood of extreme floods, and shifting the geography of risk. Without accounting for these changes, investments made today could be under threat within decades.
JBA provides climate change scenarios that show how flood hazards may evolve up to 2100. These scenarios can be combined with asset data to stress-test networks and identify where long-term adaptation measures are required. For decision makers, this means being able to design solutions and investment strategies that remain robust under a range of future climate conditions.
In Peru, an electricity transmission operator undertook work to strengthen the resilience of its network by developing a geohazard management system that considered multiple hazards and future climate scenarios.
JBA’s Global Flood Maps were provided as a key input to the assessment. The maps cover fluvial, pluvial, and coastal flooding, offering consistent national-scale data even in regions where local studies were unavailable. By overlaying these data with asset locations, the project team quantified exposure and integrated flood hazard into a wider risk framework that also addressed landslides, wildfire, wind, lightning, and extreme temperatures.
Crucially, the study incorporated climate change scenarios up to 2100, helping to understand how risks may evolve over the lifetime of infrastructure. The resulting geohazard management system now provides a clear foundation for resilience planning, investment prioritisation, and long-term adaptation.
From energy networks in Latin America to transport systems in Africa and Asia, JBA’s Global Flood Maps are helping decision makers build resilience into infrastructure projects worldwide. By combining consistent hazard data with local knowledge and expertise, operators and governments can safeguard essential services, protect communities, and plan confidently for a changing climate.
To discuss how the maps could support your work, please get in touch with our team.
Ready to discuss your next project? Contact our team today.
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