What is Resiliency? These 10 Examples Prove the Point

In its 2024 Climate Resiliency Report, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce made a big claim: Each $1 invested in disaster preparation saves $13 in economic costs, damages, and cleanup. 

The takeaway is clear: Investing in the preparation for climate-related catastrophes produces a higher ROI than just focusing on recovery alone. But what, exactly, does that preparation look like? It’s more than just boarding up windows and buying sandbags.

The solutions, approaches, technologies, and partnerships that make up resiliency are varied. Resiliency for a community that is vulnerable to hailstorms in the Midwest looks different from resiliency for a community facing flooding or fires.

At The Epicenter, we define resiliency as the ability of infrastructure—the physical, economic, and social systems central to the functioning of an economy and a society—to withstand extreme climate impacts and recover from them quickly. This briefing aims to add context and color to that definition through a range of specific examples.

1. Fortified Roofing and Building Materials

Current Reality: America’s aging housing stock means the roofing and building materials we’ve used to construct the majority of buildings in the U.S. are not suited for the current frequency or severity of storms—whether they are hailstorms, hurricanes, or wildfires. The median age of owner-occupied homes in the U.S. is 40 years, according to 2021 data from the American Community Survey. Just less than half of the owner-occupied homes were built before 1980, and 35% were built before 1970. Furthermore, traditional roofs in hail-prone areas last half as long (10 years vs. 20 years) as roofs in non-hail areas because they need to be replaced more frequently. 

Resilient Solutions: Fortified roofing and stronger building materials can reduce the costs of disasters for individual homeowners and for communities as a whole.

• Installing impact-resistant asphalt shingles to protect against hail has been found to provide $3 of savings for every $1 in added cost. The average impact-resistant roof could last 60% longer than traditional roofs (30-50 years with impact-resistant shingles, as compared to 15-30 years for a well-maintained asphalt shingle roof).
• Opportunities for resilient materials can be found throughout the home: concrete framing, strong exterior sheathing on the sides of homes, impact-resistant windows and garage doors, and fire-resistant coating. FORTIFIED Home standards, a beyond-code construction program from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), offers three levels of fortifications that builders can adhere to. Louisiana, Alabama, and Minnesota offer up to $10,000 for homeowners to invest in more resilient materials.
• One compelling example of fortified building materials and resilient construction practices is Hunters Point, a single-family home neighborhood development near Tampa that was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.

Resiliency Spotlight: Nanotech Materials' Cool Roof & Fire Mitigation technologies | Recently, Maddie Vann from The Epicenter team sat down for an interview with Carrie Horazeck, Chief Commercial Officer for Nanotech Materials, and Troy Marshall, VP of Fire Proofing for Nanotech Materials. Seven key highlights from the interview offer insights into opportunities and challenges with traditional fire mitigation and cool roof materials. >> Read More

2. Upgraded Building Codes

Current Reality: 65% of counties, cities, and towns across the U.S. have yet to adopt the most up-to-date building codes, according to a FEMA report. Meanwhile, 30% of new construction is happening in areas with either no building codes or codes that are more than 20 years old.

Resilient Solutions: Building to the most stringent code requirements can protect new assets from damage from wildfires, hurricanes, and other storms. 

• FEMA estimates that in the forty years from 2000 to 2040, the U.S. will save $132 billion in property damages with the use of modern building codes.
• For wildfires, a 2021 analysis from the California Building Industry Association found that only 1% of homes built after 2010 (compliant with the most up-to-date building codes) suffered damage in nine of the most destructive fires since 2017.
• For hurricanes, the reinsurance company Swiss Re concluded that building standards improvements in Florida since the 1970s have trimmed the magnitude of annual losses expected to result from hurricanes by 90-100%. In other words, the cost of hurricanes would be double what they are today had we not strengthened building codes.

3. Better Zoning Policies

Current Reality: Old or outdated zoning and building codes can create vulnerabilities both before a disaster hits and in the recovery and rebuilding process. Consider New Orleans's zoning codes at the time of Hurricane Katrina. They had largely been in place since the 1970s, with only a few revisions in the 1990s. According to a report by The American Planning Association, “The lack of a useful and effective zoning ordinance, as well as an effective political and regulatory structure necessary to enforce it, has often been cited as one of the reasons for the city’s contentious post-Katrina recovery process.”

Resilient Solutions: Effective zoning policies can both limit the damage of a natural disaster before it hits and facilitate the recovery and rebuilding process. Land use planning regulations and zoning requirements are varied, but can include everything from requiring defensible space in the home ignition zone (the immediate space around the home), ensuring adequate water supply, improving road widths and access, managing vegetation, and improving how neighborhoods are masterplanned.

• Wildfire severity and rate-of-spread of fire increase at specific topographic features such as saddles, ridge lines, drainages, canyons, and steep slopes, meaning that zoning changes for future developments can lead to reduced wildfire spread.
• In the wake of the Marshall Fires that destroyed over 1,000 homes in Colorado in 2021, FEMA outlined a list of fire-resistant zoning recommendations. 
• California passed a fire-safety law to implement the “five-foot” rule, which is intended to keep the five feet of perimeter around a structure free of potentially combustible material.

4. Innovative Technologies That Protect Assets

Current Reality: In 30 minutes, a hailstorm can cause billions of dollars worth of damage across a community and tens of millions of dollars of damage to solar panels specifically. Over 70% of solar losses in the last decade have occurred since 2017.  Hail is responsible for 54% of all solar claims, with the average solar hail claim at $58 million.

Resilient Solutions: New technologies can identify an incoming storm and reduce the exposure of assets in its path. 

• The majority of large, utility-scale solar projects use trackers, or systems that tilt the solar panels to follow the sun during the day. These same trackers can tilt and store panels before a hail storm hits.
• Companies like Nextracker are producing hail mitigation products that connect to weather and use data to adjust panel angles ahead of hailstorms. Another company, ARRAY Technologies, has developed its SmarTrack technology that uses data to “stow” only the solar panel rows that are directly threatened by severe weather, allowing the rest to continue harnessing solar energy. HailDens360, developed by Kisters, is a high-resolution hailstorm forecast and sensing technology to minimize impacts to operations and assets.

5. Early Detection and Warning Systems

Current Reality: The systems to detect nascent fires and storms and communicate to residents in harm’s way often break down or aren’t as effective as they need to be. The result can be lives lost, gridlock traffic on evacuation routes, and added damage. In the wake of the Los Angeles fires in January 2025 that cost at least 29 lives and billions of dollars of damage, attention has turned to failures in the early warning and communication systems. Evacuation orders came in too late for some neighborhoods, and there were false alerts telling communities not in danger to immediately evacuate. 

Resilient Solutions: With advances in 5G technology, AI, and satellite internet, there are a range of technologies that are used to detect risks before they become active hazards.

• Early warning systems can save lives and assets worth at least ten times their cost. Just 24 hours of warning for a storm or heat wave can cut the ensuing damage by 30%.
• Companies like Overstory and AI-Dash use technology to conduct vegetation management and intelligence. Overstory works with utilities like PG&E to optimize resources, mitigate vegetation risk, and future-proof their operations. 
• Pano offers a connected, intelligent platform for fire professionals that helps them to rapidly detect threats, confirm fires, and disseminate information to responders. It uses ultra-high-definition cameras, geo satellite data, field sensors, legacy cameras, emergency alerts, and other data feeds to reduce the response times so small fires don’t become infernos.
• At a national scale, NOAA is piloting its Next Generation Fire System (NGFS) that uses artificial intelligence to rapidly and autonomously identify fires from observations made by geostationary satellites.

6. A Fortified Electrical Grid

Current Reality: From 2000 to 2021, weather-related events were responsible for 83% of all power outages. Today, over 70% of the U.S. electricity grid is more than 25 years old. An old grid is not only a dirty grid, it’s also a vulnerable grid. Power outages from severe storms have doubled in the last two decades, and the leading causes of electric power outage events are extreme weather and climate-related threats.

Resilient Solutions: Building a fortified, resilient, winterized grid can reduce potential damages and ensure powerful storms don’t leave people without power and heat.

• Grid-enhancing technologies like advanced conductor cables (i.e. power lines) can better withstand heat and severe weather, while dynamic line ratings, which determine in real-time how much power can be transferred through the grid based on weather conditions, are better suited for fluctuating energy demand during extreme weather events. Even just burying power lines beneath the ground can lead to a grid less susceptible to extreme weather.
• Microgrids are localized power grids that aren’t reliant on the main grid. Microgrids in Florida, Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas created “electric sanctuaries” where communities were able to keep the power on and ensure that medical and emergency services could address community needs. The Blue Lake Rancheria microgrid north of San Francisco is another example of a localized renewable power grid that reduces energy costs and creates local resiliency.
• Renewable energy sources like wind and solar can reduce the strain on the grid during times of peak usage. For example, during a 2023 heatwave in Texas, solar and energy storage stepped in while 10 gigawatts of power from coal and nuclear plants were offline. 

7. Financing Forest Management

Current Reality: The accumulation of dead and dry vegetation in forests increases the risk of wildfires. A 20-year study from UC Berkeley found that prescribed burning and restoration thinning can reduce wildfire risk and boost a forest’s resilience to climate change. The problem is that such practices are not yet commonplace, and the U.S. and state forest services are underfunded. 

Resilient Solutions: Improving forest management is often considered the responsibility of the U.S. Forest Service, but private capital has a role to play in improving forest management practices and picking up where the U.S. Forest Service leaves off.

• A project in the Tahoe National Forest rolled out restoration treatments to 14,545 acres through a $4 million Forest Resilience Bond (FRB) issued by Blue Forest Conservation. Resilience Bonds are growing in popularity, and a report by The Nature Conservancy in 2021 identified new models for green bonds to fund forest restoration and fire resiliency projects. Environmental Impact Bonds (EIBs) are modeled after social impact bonds and present another way for impact investors and capital allocators to fund projects that reduce the effects of wildfires.

8. New Insurance & Reinsurance Models

Current Reality: Mispriced risk in insurance markets is leading to major losses for insurance companies and higher exposure for property owners. One estimate puts insurance industry losses for the Palisade and Eaton fires in Los Angeles between $25 billion and $39 billion. Meanwhile, insurance companies are cancelling policies and reducing coverage. In the riskiest areas of California, Insurance companies declined to renew 2.8 million homeowner policies in the state between 2020 and 2022, according to data from the California Department of Insurance.

Resilient Solutions: New insurance and reinsurance models are more accurately pricing in risk and extending coverage. As heightened wildfire risk strains the insurance and reinsurance markets, new insurance models are emerging to offer fresh solutions.

• Insurance innovators like Kettle are emerging with new models to fill the gap. Kettle uses AI to build smarter insurance products that better protect people from the catastrophic effects of climate change. Kettle applies machine learning algorithms that use billions of lines of weather, fuel, satellite, anthropogenic, and ground truth data to develop new actuarial models for commercial insurance and parametric wildfire insurance. 
• Another example is Delos, which offers insurance to homes in the WUI with limited insurance options by leveraging AI models to more accurately underwrite insurance coverage.
• Fathom is a flood and climate risk fintech that is pricing water and flood risk into actuarial models. Fathom is part of The Swiss Re Group, one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance and insurance.

9. Public-Private Partnerships

Current Reality: Investing in long-term resiliency initiatives is expensive, and many local governments lack the capital to invest in resiliency long-term and meet post-disaster relief needs. FEMA funding can help in the wake of a disaster, but it is often insufficient. As of late 2024, after multiple costly storms like Hurricane Helene and Milton, FEMA’s public assistance program was at risk of running out of money. During those hurricanes in the fall, ​​Congress appropriated $20 billion to FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, but FEMA spent about half of that amount in just eight days.

Resilient Solutions: When public capital falls short, public-private partnerships can help leverage private capital—both for long-term resiliency initiatives and emergency funding after a disaster.

• Long-term resiliency funding: Phoenix has developed a master plan to expand its tree canopy and shade cover across the city. For one urban reforesting project, they leveraged $500M of private capital to transform 595 acres of deteriorated river bottom and adjacent land into a lush riparian corridor with miles of paved and dirt trails. Phoenix joins a number of other major American cities leveraging public-private partnerships to expand tree coverage across a city and reduce urban temperatures. They cite as inspiration public-private partnerships like Chicago’s Master Plan for Trees 2050, New York City’s MillionTreesNYC, and the Million Trees in LA initiative.
• Short-term emergency funding: In Houston, the Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security created a regional Supply Chain Group to maintain supply chains and critical infrastructure during and after an emergency event like a hurricane. It is one example of how public-private partnerships are anchoring the Resilient Houston master plan. This group aligned representatives from infrastructure—including power, water, building supplies, telecommunications, transportation, and grocery stores—to coordinate efforts surrounding hurricanes and other emergencies.

10. Municipal Bonds

Current Reality: The largest pools of resilience capital are public. But even still, local coffers are often not enough to make investments in long-term resiliency initiatives. States across the U.S. face an estimated backlog of almost $1 trillion of deferred maintenance and needed upgrades to public infrastructure. Such gaps create opportunities for municipal bonds and other financing mechanisms that harness private capital.

Resilient Solutions: Municipal bonds are a cornerstone of public finance and the economy of the United States, enabling state and local governments to fund critical infrastructure and services like roads, bridges, utilities, and other critical infrastructure. States and local governments are responsible for more than 90% of all public-sector construction spending, most of which is funded through tax-exempt municipal bonds.

• In 2017, the City of Miami Beach, Florida, issued $162 million in general obligation (GO) bonds to finance critical stormwater infrastructure upgrades aimed at mitigating flooding caused by sea level rise and extreme weather events. Approved by voter referendum, the bond-funded projects included raising roads, installing stormwater pumps, and enhancing drainage systems as part of the city's broader Stormwater Master Plan. By using long-term debt financing, Miami Beach proactively invested in flood resilience rather than relying on post-disaster federal relief. These infrastructure improvements were designed to reduce insurance premiums, protect property values, and enhance the city’s overall climate adaptation efforts.

Have thoughts to share on this piece, or want to add your voice to the conversation? Reach out!