The report concludes, however, that cost effective adaptation measures already exist that can prevent between 40 and 68 percent of the expected economic loss with even higher levels of prevention possible in highly target geographies.

The working group behind the report estimated expected economic loss for the eight different case study regions leveraging natural catastrophe risk modeling techniques assuming current GDP growth estimates, under three different climate change scenarios – today’s climate (assuming that there is no additional impact from climate change); moderate climate change (based on the average forecast of climate change for the particular hazard in the location studied); and high climate change (based on the outer range of the climate change considered possible by 2030). 

The methodology is applicable in any setting where society must consider risk. For example, in Florida the report estimates an annual expected loss of $33 billion from hurricanes – more than 10 percent of GDP - under a high climate change scenario.