Solution Build a national platform where government, insurers, lenders, utilities and developers all contribute the hazard, claims, defence and exposure data they hold and access what they need, so that every party sees the same view of flood risk. Key challenge Even where models can accommodate place-based resilience, they depend on data no single party holds: hazard maps, claims experience, infrastructure records, planning codes, building design details and exposure data sit with different institutions, and each sees only part of the picture. Context Flooding is Ireland's costliest peril, with recent events causing more than €800 million ($934 million) in damage. Household insurance penetration is high, with about 98% of homes holding cover, but flood cover is the exception. Insurers classified entire neighbourhoods as uninsurable based on crude location data; as one parliamentary committee put it, it is impossible to get flood insurance for a dwelling within 100 metres of a river even if it is an apartment 100 feet off the ground. The government built flood defences, but insurers had no reliable means of verifying the standard or effectiveness of those defences, and so did not reflect them in pricing data. A 2014 agreement between the government and the insurance industry was meant to fix this but had little practical effect. The result: the state was investing in protection, and homeowners were not seeing the benefit. The issue affects high flood-risk zones across urban, peri-urban and rural areas and all property types. Solution in practice The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)'s Grantham Research Institute proposed a national flood-risk data platform where all parties contribute what they know and access what they need. Government agencies would provide data on flood defences and hazard maps. Insurers would provide claims data showing where losses actually occur. Lenders, utilities and developers would both use the platform and feed it, because their decisions shape future risk. Similar platforms already work elsewhere: Austria, Germany, Australia and France all run national flood-data systems that insurers use in pricing. Ireland's version would go further by connecting the entire property value chain in one place. Impact / outcome Proposal stage; has prompted a 2026 Lloyd's Lab and Department of Finance flood-resilience Program. Next steps While the proposal has emerging institutional support, further incentives are needed to operationalize the platform. It has also spurred related innovation: in 2026, Lloyd's Lab partnered with Ireland's Department of Finance on a dedicated flood-resilience Program, with several start-ups developing improved flood-resilience data - the next step is to start sharing it. The playbook sets out two areas where innovation is required. Data sharing needs shared infrastructure and standardized formats: hyperlocal data sharing is needed across the property value chain, via two complementary routes - open platforms giving all stakeholders the same baseline data (such as Resilience Arc), and consistent standards that make proprietary data comparable even where it cannot be shared, with collaboration with organizations such as the Carbon Disclosure Project, which is expanding its disclosure frameworks to include extreme weather risk and resilience metrics. Clear governance, updates and common standards for critical datasets: policy-makers and regulators can oversee who owns, updates, validates and can access critical datasets, alongside guidance on appropriate use - government hazard maps are often designed to identify danger to life rather than estimate property damage, so using them for insurance pricing can produce misleading outputs, and may also be outdated. A structural tension remains: actors holding the most granular claims and loss data have built competitive advantage on it, and sharing carries genuine commercial and legal risk; without their participation shared platforms may remain reliant on less precise public datasets. Progress requires engagement with reinsurers and catastrophe model vendors to agree common standards for how place-based resilience is reflected across key datasets. Organizations involved Authoring: Marsh Actors: Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); Lloyd's Lab; Department of Finance, Ireland Implementation partners Regulators & Policymakers; Insurers; Investors & Banks; Infrastructure Owners & Operators; Data Providers; Property value chain stakeholders