A new tool developed by the state will assist Connecticut home and business owners in better determining whether their property may be impacted by climate-related damage.
The climate risk mapping tool helps property owners prepare for severe weather events and determine the risk it may pose to their home or business, according to Connecticut Insurance Department (CID) Deputy Commissioner Jared Kosky.
“We want homebuyers and home sellers to be better informed, more aware of the property that they are purchasing and selling, and to take the next steps, the actions needed to either properly insure or mitigate those properties,” Kosky said.
While some communities have similar mapping systems available on a municipal level, Connecticut’s tool is the first statewide, publicly available system, Kosky said.
Residents can enter an address into the database and receive a report that outlines the risk of flood, fire, wind, air quality and extreme heat damage. The climate risk mapping tool ranks each property’s risk from one to 10, based on previous climate events in the area and the likelihood of future extreme weather.
It also outlines the predicted cost of damage to homes from the weather over time and tracks how many “pollution facilities” followed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are in the area.
The idea for the tool was developed after widespread damage last year in Southwestern Connecticut, Kosky said.
"This concept of providing this information, came from following the flooding that we had in the Naugatuck Valley area in August of 2024, when we heard from consumers, from homeowners impacted by that devastating flooding that they weren't aware, that they weren't aware that their home was susceptible to flooding,” Kosky said.
The tool is a collaboration between CID and the company First Street, which is a provider of physical climate risk data and analytics. It uses publicly available federal data to determine risk.
First Street will continually update the database as new climate events occur and data become available, Kosky said.
The mapping tool is an alternative to using FEMA flood mapping, but incorporates FEMA data, Kosky said.
“Those models, those maps, are backwards looking at the events that have occurred, whereas what First Street does, and some of the other new models that we're seeing, are taking that information from the past, but also modeling to the future and updating them more frequently than what we see,” Kosky said.
With the mapping, business and homeowners can prepare for potential future flooding events and estimate the cost of damage.
“Many of the affected property owners did not have flood insurance because they did not believe they were at risk,” CID Commissioner Andrew Mais said. “Homeowner’s insurance policies traditionally do not cover flood damage, yet nearly half of all flood damage occurs outside FEMA-designated flood zones."
