NAIAD Project
NAIAD
Nature insurance value of
ecosystems: assessment and demonstration
General goal
NAIAD aims to operationalize the insurance value of ecosystems to reduce the human and economic cost of water-related risks (floods and drought) by developing and testing – with the main insurers and municipalities – the concepts, tools, applications and instruments (business models) necessary for its integration. We will do this in detail for 8 demonstration sites (DEMOs) throughout Europe and develop tools and methods that are applicable and transferable throughout Europe. The assumption is that natural insurance programs can reduce risk, especially drought and flood, and this risk reduction can be assessed and integrated into insurance plans.
NAIAD’s conceptual framework is based on three pillars:
- Help build a resilience approach to risk management through nature-based solutions.
- The adoption of nature-based solutions that are cost-effective and provide environmental, social and economic benefits.
- The operationalization and experimentation of scientific methods using a source-to-sea in the DEMOs.
Transdisciplinarity and stakeholder engagement are at the heart of NAIAD for two reasons: first, because the conceptual and evaluation methodologies combine the physical, social, cultural and economic aspects, embedded in tools and methods, and second, and most importantly because they are validated with the stakeholders and the end users themselves in the DEMOs.
Operational goals
NAIAD will help provide a sound framework for assessing the value of insurance for ecosystem services by:
- enabling full operationalization through a better understanding of ecosystem functionality and insurance value across a wide range of scales in urban and rural contexts.
- making explicit the links between ecosystem values and social risk perception.
- putting in place methods and tools in water management developed by relevant stakeholders, in particular companies, public authorities and public services.
National partners
