RiskThinking.ai has created the Climate Digital Twin (CDT), a global climate risk platform designed for strategic decision-making. It aims to assist financial institutions, government agencies, corporations, and the communities they serve. The platform’s main goal is to turn the complexity of climate change into clear, actionable insights. It achieves this by simulating billions of potential climate futures, not just one, helping users predict future risks and make better decisions. This approach goes beyond selecting specific scenarios to include modelling extreme events and uncovering cumulative risks that might otherwise be overlooked.
The CDT was created to help organizations plan for unprecedented events. It develops a dynamic model of the future using probabilistic models and extensive data instead of assumptions. The platform is built on thousands of global climate models and employs techniques like geospatial downscaling to provide data needed to stress test any asset, anywhere in the world. Users can stress test their financial and physical exposure, develop cost-effective adaptation strategies, and safeguard the long-term value of their assets. The system is designed to show multiple possible futures to capture the full range of future uncertainties.
The platform provides global coverage with asset-level precision. It is specifically designed to identify low-probability, high-impact climate events and model how multiple hazards can interact and build over time. The CDT is trusted by a wide range of organisations, including banks, asset managers, insurers, and public institutions, to deliver consistent analysis across the entire enterprise.
The CDT combines detailed climate data with a database of over 6 million physical assets, including factories and properties, covering more than 60 asset types. This physical asset data links to over 12,000 parent companies and 80,000 subsidiaries. The system offers high-resolution climate projections from 2025 to 2100 for more than 50 hazards, such as floods, wildfires, and extreme heat, presented as probability-weighted distributions.
This technology is already utilised by many institutions globally, including major firms like TMX and Bloomberg. In 2024, Canadian regulators mandated over 100 financial institutions to adopt the CDT for their regulatory stress testing and reporting duties. The platform has gained international recognition, earning awards from Chartis and Environmental Finance. The company’s experts also actively influence climate science by contributing to international standards and developing the next generation of data standards for the United Nations IPCC.
Practical applications of the CDT are extensive. For instance, a global asset manager uses it to evaluate climate risk across 25,000 equities. A real estate investment trust (REIT) automates climate risk reporting during due diligence for potential property acquisitions. A risk manager can assess the climate risk in a mortgage portfolio containing two million properties, which helps with loss estimates and capital planning. In corporate strategy, an operations manager employed the CDT to measure the return on investment for a $500 million adaptation project across company manufacturing facilities.
Your role in staying updated is integral to our shared mission of fostering a community of innovators. CanadianSME Magazine is a valuable treasure trove of entrepreneurial knowledge. Click here to subscribe to our monthly editions for updates on Canadian businesses. Follow our handle, @canadian_sme, on X to stay updated on all business trends and developments. Your support is crucial to our mission.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available information intended only for informational purposes. CanadianSME Small Business Magazine does not endorse or guarantee any products or services mentioned. Readers are advised to conduct their research and due diligence before making business decisions.
