Treating wood as a public utility, rather than a waste product, could reduce fire risk, support insurer re-entry, and unlock economic value that currently goes up in smoke.
Treating wood as a public utility, rather than a waste product, could reduce fire risk, support insurer re-entry, and unlock economic value that currently goes up in smoke.
The same principles that accelerate disaster recovery can address housing supply constraints, urban disinvestment, and affordability challenges in any market.
Los Angeles is pioneering a new disaster recovery model that combines cross-sector collaboration, AI-powered coordination technology, and pre-approved wildfire-resilient home catalogs.
The absence of references to climate change in utilities' bond disclosures suggests we have not systematically assessed how climate hazards could disrupt operations or revenues and, just as concerning, that they aren’t incorporating climate risk into capital planning and investment decisions.
The lack of standard home rebuilding playbooks, combined with the uneven delivery of federal disaster recovery funding, has led to fragmented rebuilding efforts over the past few decades. However, disaster recovery has evolved to more systematic approaches using pre-approved home plan catalogs.
Winter Storm Fern swept across a huge swath of the United States in January 2026, revealing both vulnerabilities and progress on the climate resilience and adaptation front.
Twenty-three billion-dollar disasters, $115 billion in damage, and not one hurricane: 2025 was a masterclass in how climate risk in the U.S. has changed.
Most conversations about climate resilience in commercial real estate development happen when designing new structures to withstand future storms or when repairing or retrofitting existing ones after disaster strikes. Far less attention is paid to the in-between stage: the active construction site.
In an interview with The Epicenter, Joe Rozza of Ryan Companies explains what happens when a major storm hits mid-construction and why CRE leaders should give as much weight to their works in process as they do to projects on either end of the building spectrum.
Extreme weather events and a changing climate are reshaping long-term housing affordability across America. The result is a migration pattern that would have shocked demographers a decade ago: people are leaving the Sun Belt and heading to the Rust Belt.
As the climate crisis exposes broader swaths of the U.S. to severe weather, responsible future-proofing strategies must account not only for fortified development but also for comprehensive cleanup. Real resilience can't exist without effective remediation first.
Over the last 15 years, Rhode Island has seen cataclysmic inland flooding, tornadoes, and rapidly rising sea levels wearing away at its coast. But the state plans to be a safer, more stable place to live in 50 years.
