Local governments have a responsibility to prepare for extreme events like natural catastrophes, recessions, and more. Preparation requires planning. The best plans are supported by data. However, most data on extreme event risk is conveyed as single number averages, which masks the uncertainty necessary for valid planning. A consortium of climate scientists, insurance service providers, policy makers, financial managers, and others, with GFOA as one of the leaders, aims to improve this state of affairs by establishing standards for communicating the uncertainty in extreme event risk. The goal is to power  collaborative networksthat explicitly communicates the chances of adverse events, not just average impact. Furthermore, it is required that such information be accessible by local decision makers without statistical training for use in their own chance-informed calculations.

• Publication date: February 2024