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Where does EarthScan's Asset Data come from?

Our climate risk intelligence relies on the highest quality dynamic data

After reading this article, you will learn:

The first step in developing high-quality Climate Intelligence is sourcing and incorporating the best available dynamic climate data. We source two main types of data - asset data and climate science data. This article explores asset data.

Assets are existing physical entities with some tangible measure of value that can be exposed to physical or transitional risk, such as built, linear or natural capital assets. 

What are built assets? 

Built assets are existing buildings that are free standing, permanent (non-mobile), man-made, land-based, aboveground structures, such as office buildings, factories and power plants. Built assets can be characterized by properties such as location, footprint, number of floors, construction materials, function, location etc. Built asset properties can be fixed (such as location), or can vary over time (such as function). 

How have we built EarthScan's Asset Data Model? 

EarthScan uses third-party data sources to classify data on global assets. Currently, approximately 500 million built assets are discoverable in EarthScan. We map assets across the globe by creating virtual representations of their real-world counterparts, based on identified asset properties that we define. 

Virtual representations of single assets in our global Asset Data Model are called Canonical Assets, and are built using two distinct layers of geospatial data. Combining these two layers of geospatial data link asset footprints to asset properties, known as Canonical Attributes. 

  • The first geospatial data layer is asset footprint data, which we use to construct a physical model of real-world global assets subject to climate-related risk. The data in this layer geometrically represents the amount of space physically occupied by existing buildings. 
  • The second layer contains metadata describing both tangible (for example, location or building materials) and intangible (for example, names) asset properties. 

How is Asset Data stored in the Canonical Asset Store (CAS)?

Canonical Assets and their attribute data are stored in a carefully structured, internal data warehouse that feeds into the Canonical Asset Store (CAS), a user-facing database of global assets. CAS is a single, authoritative data source for each asset, maintaining the integrity and validity of each asset’s data. All Canonical Assets have a unique EarthScan Asset ID, from which all accompanying metadata from multiple sources are linked. Asset data is internally validated against key reference asset datasets. 

You can access the Canonical Asset Store through the Asset Catalogue. The queryable Asset Catalogue includes millions of pre-labelled physical assets with new assets and labels added continuously, allowing you to search and add assets of interest to your portfolios, or upload your own assets. 

What are the sources of Asset Data?

Asset data and metadata stored in the Asset Catalogue come from multiple high quality data sources. EarthScan’s asset data coverage is constantly improving with additional data sources across more geographical locations. 

Some of our asset data sources include:

  • ATTOM’s Tax Assessor Data

ATTOM’s Tax Assessor Data covers more than 155 million US properties in more than 3,000 counties nationwide. This data includes publicly available information collected by county tax assessor offices, which can then be collated into specialized reports at various levels of geography. This data includes property identification, addresses, current and past property ownership, legal descriptions, property features, values and taxes.

A community-driven map of the world's built and natural assets. Buildings on OpenStreetMaps often possess user-supplied tags, which identify certain characteristics of the building.

  • Climate-Value-at-Risk asset data  

As well as the asset data sources that provide asset-level data and metadata stored in the Asset Catalogue, we use data sources that provide physical risk data on the vulnerability of assets in relation to climate hazard exposure. Building type data comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), from surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) database.