24 March 2026
Flood specialist JBA Risk Management has extensively updated its Global Flood Model, introducing enhanced hazard maps, a broad range of future climate event sets, and improvements to both processing speed and exposure disaggregation. These developments enable reinsurers, insurers, brokers, risk managers and asset managers to gain a clearer understanding of both present and evolving exposure to flood risk, and to undertake transparent, fully auditable stress testing with greater confidence.
The model includes updated maps for 17 key countries (Hungary, Japan, China, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Poland, Slovakia, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, South Korea, South Africa) incorporating newly available bare earth Digital Terrain Model data, refreshed hydrology aligned with JBA’s latest global methodology, updated land use information, and improved classification of river and surface water flood types.
It also features enhanced and expanded future climate event sets, including eight CMIP6‑based climate event sets, with a new 2080 timeline and two hours clauses, providing greater flexibility for exploring how flood risk may evolve. The model has faster and improved disaggregation based on global building footprints, and administrative boundary updates reflecting evolving geopolitical changes.
In creating climate-conditioned event sets, JBA’s scientifically robust method applies global climate model-derived change factors to the underlying hydrological time series to generate new events, rather than scaling present-day events. This approach alters event frequency, magnitude and spatial coherence in line with projected climate signals, enabling structured exploration of how flood risk may evolve under different warming pathways.
The model’s new exposure disaggregation framework delivers improved placement within building footprints, voids waterbodies, parks, and unsuitable landcover, and enables faster processing.
The model is underpinned by the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework, ensuring it is accessible on multiple platforms including Oasis, Verisk Model Exchange, and Elements from Aon’s Impact Forecasting team. The model can also be installed in-house or delivered as a bespoke portfolio analysis service by JBA’s flood experts.
David Wood, managing director, JBA Risk Management, commented:
“Our new Global Flood Model’s enhanced functionality, built on our market leading flood maps, enables our clients around the world to fully understand their flood exposure. They can now easily, and quickly, undertake ‘what if’ investigations based on their own needs, see the impacts on their losses under a range of scenarios, and fully understand individual and portfolio risk profiles.”