Commissioned by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (IenW), CAS is setting up a new portal: the Dutch Climate Risk Portal. The goal is to give professionals in the financial sector and in national and international business insights into possible climate risks in the Netherlands. What kind of information will this portal contain? And what exactly can you use it for? Detmer Koekoek, Lead NL AAA Climate Resilient, and our colleagues Lars de Ruig and Simone Kroes tell you about it.

What is the Dutch Climate Risk Portal going to be?
Lars: “The Dutch Climate Risk Portal is intended to be the primary hub for national and international companies and the financial sector to find information and data on the physical climate risks for the Netherlands, such as floods, heat waves and other extreme weather events.”
Why is it important to have this portal?
Detmer: “There is a lot of information and data about how we deal with climate risks in the Netherlands. But this is often hard to find and also difficult to interpret. As a result, misunderstandings frequently arise, leading people to believe that the Dutch delta region is more vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather than it actually is.
What are the common misconceptions about the Dutch delta region?
Detmer: “For example, the Netherlands frequently appears on lists of countries with high flood risks, primarily because one-third of the Netherlands is below sea level. This affects the choices companies and the financial sector make nationally and internationally about investments, financing and insurance. While we, as the Netherlands, consider ourselves the best protected delta in the world, it is essential to substantiate and communnicate this fact effectively.”
Lars: “For example, credit rating agencies analyze the financial risks in the Netherlands. It is increasingly becoming important for such organizations to conduct stress tests in which they include climate risks. But to perform such stress tests, they need to have the right knowledge and data. The portal aims to address the needs of companies by providing centralized insights into all physical climate risks relevant to the Netherlands, how we manage them as a country and where to find the necessary data.”
How important is climate risk information to the private sector?
Detmer: “The demand for reliable data on climate risks has grown tremendously in recent years and will only continue to grow in the coming years. Companies in the European Union are required by the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) to annually report climate risks and make policies accordingly. For large companies, this obligation applies from 2025 for reporting on the financial year 2024. In addition, banks and insurers are required by European regulators to report on the climate risks of their portfolios and take appropriate measures to manage these risks. As a result, the private sector increasingly needs high-quality data at the asset level, data on the current situation and various future scenarios. With this portal, we support the private sector create these reports and policies based on the right data. This way, the portal can have a meaningful impact and make an important contribution to a favorable business and investment climate in the Netherlands.”
Are climate risks mainly related to real estate?
Simone: “When people think of assets, they often first think of real estate, and it’s true that a lot of data is needed for this, for example, for a bank’s mortgage portfolio. But other sectors are also important for investors. How vulnerable is our agriculture to salinization? And what about our logistics sector? Could shipping suffer from prolonged periods of drought? And what could extreme heat mean for livestock transport? And what about our water supply for industry? Every sector needs climate risk data, and the portal brings this data together.”
Lars: “In addition to directing users to state-of-the-art maps on the Climate Impact Atlas or the National Information System for Water and Flooding (LIWO), we also provide context. What exactly are you talking about when discussing flood risks? Coastal flooding or river flooding? Flooded streets and roads due to heavy rainfall, or issues like mold and moisture in basements caused by high groundwater levels? And how does Dutch legislation address these risks? What is insurable and what is not? We also want to offer users the tools to start with an initial assessment themselves. And if they want to consult a consultancy firm, the portal helps them get the right support, which ultimately saves costs and leads to better knowledge.”
For whom is the Dutch Climate Risk Portal intended?
Detmer: “The portal is intended for both the national and international private sector. It’s for professionals from banks, pension funds, insurers, and real estate investors, as well as regulators and credit rating agencies. Additionally, it is intended for businesses more broadly. So, the portal can be useful for someone looking for climate risks associated with a particular investment or company. But it’s also meant for users who need analyses of entire portfolios. The goal is to provide accurate and accessible information to this large and diverse professional audience.”
What climate themes do you focus on? Do you follow the Dutch DPRA themes of heat, drought, flooding, and sea level rise?
Lars: “Yes and no. As a basis, we use the so-called ‘EU Taxonomy’. It provides a clear structure that is used nationally and internationally for legislation and reporting. The ‘EU Taxonomy’ distinguishes between risks in the areas of temperature, wind, water, and soil. These are split into ‘acute risks’ and ‘chronic risks’. An example of an acute risk is a heavy downpour. Chronic risks develop gradually over time, such as sea level rise. On the portal, we provide insight into the risks defined by the ‘EU Taxonomy’, but we also link them to the themes of the Dutch Deltaprogramme for Spatial Adaptation (DPRA).”

When will the portal go live?
Simone: “Our goal is to make the portal available in the second or third quarter of 2025. For the climate data and climate hazard information provided on the portal, we are working closely with various content experts from the Dutch climate field. Additionally, the portal is being further developed in collaboration with the Climate Adaptation Working Group of the Platform for Sustainable Finance of De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). This working group includes representatives from banks, investors, pension funds, insurers, various ministries, and the Delta Commissioner’s Office. Before the portal becomes publicly available, we will first have a beta version tested by a broader group of users.”
What do you hope to achieve with the portal?
Detmer: “The portal is primarily a data hub that we hope professionals will adopt as the ‘go-to place’ for climate data about the Netherlands, enabling better analysis and decision-making. Ultimately, we also hope that it will accelerate the development of climate data, and inspire dialogue between different experts and sectors about what data is needed and how to use it. For example, a company may be more interested in specific scenarios for dike breaches related to business continuity, while a mortgage lender would focus on the risks for specific buildings and portfolios. In the end, all these different parties should be able to make the right choices.”
Simone: “In addition: we hope to create a level playing field by making the same data available to everyone. This way, we can prevent some parties from having a better starting position than others.”
Help us develop the portal
To make sure the portal meets user needs, we have created a user group to help us test a beta version of the portal. Are you curious about the portal and want to contribute to its development? Then sign up as a tester via the application form.