Serving the Climate Information Needs of Industry

A Historic Investment for Resilience and Prosperity

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Industry Proving Grounds (IPG) is an innovative effort to develop and share actionable climate information and improve the delivery of that information to industry partners. The IPG connects major U.S. industries with NOAA products, services, and actionable extreme weather and climate data to better assess risks and opportunities. The IPG will connect these industries with environmental data to build a more resilient future for our nation, economy, and communities. 

Headed by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the IPG initiative focuses on three major sectors: architecture and engineering, reinsurance and insurance, and retail. One example of the IPG initiative assisting the U.S. economy is a series of updates to the Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (BDD) database, including adding sub-billion-dollar disasters. The BDD integrates weather disaster data with economic information, offering a comprehensive view of disaster impacts on a national scale. By quantifying weather events based on their financial toll, BDD provides risk metrics related to exposure and vulnerability. The database aids the reinsurance and insurance industry in policy risk mapping, offers risk assessments at the county level for the retail sector, and regional weather extremes for architecture and engineering sectors.

NOAA, alongside key industry leaders, is working to promote climate resilience across the United States. The IPG will allow NOAA to deliver more modernized products and services to help build adaptation in the face of weather and climate extremes while strengthening the U.S. economy.

Through the IPG, NOAA is working to:

  • Build a comprehensive suite of products and services that empower extreme weather- and climate-smart decisions across sectors.
  • Enhance data accessibility by creating new formats and methods to share insights with industry partners.
  • Centralize weather and environmental information on dedicated, sector-specific web pages to streamline access and usability.

IPG’s Alignment with NOAA’s Strategic Goals

The IPG program contributes to NOAA’s mission by:

  • Building a more resilient and prosperous nation.
  • Enhancing service delivery and accessibility for industry partners.
  • Providing a trusted, comprehensive set of products for user needs.
  • Supporting communities information needs to build resilience.
  • Demonstrating the application of authoritative climate data and services across industries.

IPG’s Collaborative Industry Partnerships

  • Architecture and Engineering: The IPG program is accelerating climate-smart infrastructure standards that increase resilience nationwide. Working with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA), IPG provides data to help industry leaders account for climate factors in infrastructure design and construction, ensuring safety and productivity in harmony with environmental goals. This collaboration focuses on developing climate information products that offer foresight into future environmental conditions for resilient structures.
  • Insurance and Reinsurance: Through mechanisms such as a Memorandum of Understanding with the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA), IPG collaborates with primary insurers and reinsurers to enhance the climate data informing their risk models and analyses. This partnership enables climate-resilient, data-driven decisions that protect life and property across the nation. IPG’s collaboration with RAA and its partners leverages NCEI’s climate data to support faster recovery and informed, climate-smart decisions within the insurance industry.
  • Retail: The IPG program is collaborating with members of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), and other retail industry organizations, to identify critical data and information solutions that support resilient supply chains, asset protection, energy efficiencies, and workforce safety. IPG and retail  are focusing on data accessibility, usability, and transforming datasets to support the retail sector. Through this collaboration, IPG is developing and deploying data tools to strengthen the retail industry’s resilience to extreme weather and climate, while achieving sustainability goals.

Our Vision


To radically improve delivery and industry uptake of climate information to enable effective decision-making and operations in the architecture and engineering, insurance and reinsurance, and retail industries. The IPG will help industry answer its most pressing questions about environmental information to make climate-smart investments and build resilience.

From left to right: (1) A man’s hand holds a key with a house icon above his other hand in a warm handshake with a woman. (2) Three people in construction high-vis jackets and hard hats stand on a rooftop at sunset overlooking a city skyline. One man holds schematics, another holds a tool, and the third points as the others look in that direction. Behind them is a construction crane. (3) A man, woman, and child push a grocery cart through a store. Behind them are shelves of products.
(Image credit: (Left to Right): Pexels.com, RDNE Stock Project; GettyImages, ljubaphoto; Pexels.com, Gustavo Fring)
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What We Do

NOAA, through NCEI, is advancing business resilience through its IPG program, which partners directly with three vital industries—Architecture and Engineering, Insurance and Reinsurance, and Retail. The IPG program is developing data products to enable these sectors to better assess climate risks and make informed, rapid decisions for both immediate and long-term planning. These tools—spanning maps, reports, and datasets—will strengthen industry resilience and build community resilience to adverse environmental impacts.

 

Sectors

Architecture and Engineering

Meteor shower over the Newport Bridge, Rhode Island.

From residential buildings to critical infrastructure like bridges, dams, and roads, the Nation's existing structures are impacted by weather and climate. Changes in extreme heat, heavy rainfall, and sea level all affect how we need to design and build in the future throughout every region. NOAA data underpins the building and design codes that govern architecture and engineering standards across the U.S. NOAA has been working directly with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the University of Maryland Center for Technology and Systems Management through the ASCE NOAA Task Force to accelerate development of climate-smart engineering codes and standards. The IPG is building on what the ASCE NOAA Task Force has learned to design data, products, and services that are useful, usable, and used across the Nation.

Insurance and Reinsurance

Hurricane Ian making landfall near Cayo Costa in southwestern Florida as a dangerous Category 4 storm after plowing a path of destruction through the Caribbean, bringing particularly heavy rainfall and dangerous surf to Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and western Cuba.

The insurance and reinsurance industry (re/insurance) provides critical financial support that helps communities recover from the impacts of extreme events. From hurricanes and other natural disasters to flooding and hail, re/insurance is critical in helping individuals across the country, including those in vulnerable or disaster-prone regions, receive timely insurance payments. The economic impact of these events is significant. From 2017 to 2024, there have been over $1 trillion in total direct losses from extreme weather and climate events in the United States. Through the IPG, NOAA is building on its historically strong relationship with the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA), working with primary insurers, reinsurers, catastrophe modelers, regulators, and other industry associations across the Nation to improve risk modeling and analysis using the latest climate information. The goal of this partnership is to allow insurers to better quantify risk in order to enable more rapid recovery and make climate-smart decisions that protect life, property, and the economy.

Retail

Aerial view from drone, Container ship or cargo shipping business logistic import and export freight transportation by container ship in open sea

As the largest private sector employer in the U.S. economy (representing $2.2 trillion of the 2022 annual gross domestic product), the retail sector needs accurate, timely weather and climate data to safeguard its interests and serve its communities. Armed with suitable climate data, retailers can act quickly during extreme weather and climate events to deliver critical goods to communities, secure facilities, and protect personnel. Forward-looking, accurate climate information empowers the retail industry to build resilient supply chains, maintain eco-friendly infrastructure, protect economic investments, and achieve sustainability goals. Since 2021, NOAA has been working with the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) to identify the data, products, and services the retail industry relies on to make tactical and strategic decisions. Through the IPG, NOAA and RILA are partnering to build useful and user-friendly products and services that equip retailers of all sizes to build climate resilience.

A satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean.. Five hurricanes are pictured, stretching from the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico, from the northern waters of Brazil to the mid-Atlantic.

IPG Products

The IPG team is actively collaborating with each sector to identify and refine data products and services to meet specific needs. Current efforts focus on developing and enhancing a suite of offerings that address unique sector-specific requirements while also creating versatile solutions applicable across multiple sectors. Examples of these products include:

  • Typical Meteorological Year (TMY): An interactive tool that provides datasets of “typical” monthly weather conditions, current and historical records for specific regions. The IPG is advancing TMY to include a future analogs component, using future climate projections to predict “typical” conditions, allowing architects and engineers to better anticipate and plan for a weather-resilient future. TMY is especially useful for evaluating climate impacts on building energy design. 
  • Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (BDD): Combining weather disaster and economic data, the BDD database quantifies disasters on a national scale and provides risk metrics based on disaster exposure. This product aids the insurance and reinsurance industry in risk mapping, offers risk assessments at the county level for the retail sector, and regional weather extremes for architecture and engineering sectors. The IPG is expanding BDD to include sub-billion dollar disasters down to $100 million, providing further insight into small-medium sized events which still have significant local or regional economic impact. 
  • Storm Events Database (SED): This database contains high-impact weather events used to validate insurance claims and support weather-resilient infrastructure. IPG is updating this resource to include interactive maps, event-specific details, and automated reporting for custom user needs.