TIME Magazine | How to Assess Your Home's Climate Risk

Around the world, from droughts to floods to wildfires, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, severe, and longer lasting. More than one in four homes in the U.S. are exposed to severe or extreme climate risks. The impact on communities is devastating: in the United States alone weather and climate disasters led to an estimated 276 fatalities and cost a total of $115 billion in damage last year.

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The best choice is to avoid living in high risk areas altogether, says Joshua Saks, adaptation program director at the Georgetown Climate Center. But if that’s not an option, think about ways you can prepare for natural disasters. “If you make the choice to live in a high risk zone, then you need to think about taking steps to protect yourself and your property,” he adds.

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While it’s good to ensure you’re doing what you can to protect yourself and your home, experts say that governments need to begin planning for disasters on a community-wide level, rather than placing the onus on individuals. “When you plan for disasters, you want to plan to protect whole communities, not individual homes,” says Saks. “When governments can do community scale planning—a flood law or communicating risks, those sorts of things are better than individual actions house by house.”

Read the full article by Simmone Shah in TIME Magazine.