Pictured: A global water risk visualization map used to analyze a customer’s supply chain and site data. With Sourcemap technology, Third Partners performs geospatial analysis of climate, deforestation, human rights, water, and flood risk at company sites and across the end-to-end supply chain.
Challenges in reporting risk
Environmental changes around the world are creating risk in terms of how businesses operate and how they source materials. Specifically, water risk (pictured) and deforestation are intensifying, and biodiversity risk also needs to be quantified and managed throughout the supply chain.
Interwoven with all of these issues, climate change poses physical, economic, and social risk for supply chains and operations. Germanwatch, a provider of climate risk rankings, puts it bluntly: “Signs of escalating climate change can no longer be ignored — on any continent or in any region.” Low-income countries tend to bear the brunt of extreme weather events, many of which are expected to become more frequent and intense with climate change, and even high-income countries are experiencing climate impacts, such as heatwaves. In short, no location is immune. Regardless of where they work, businesses are realizing that they need to analyze and communicate the climate risk involved in their products and services.
Companies with hundreds or thousands of sites and suppliers (in industries such as hospitality, real estate, and manufacturing) are spending more time than ever manually using spreadsheets and a patchwork of third-party tools to assess multiple forms of risk at all sites and to report risk to their stakeholders. The increasingly complex assortment of customer- and investor-driven sustainability and CSR reporting frameworks may read like an alphabet soup of acronyms: CDP, SASB, TCFD, SMETA, and THESIS, among others. Making matters even more complicated, many of these frameworks differ from one another on definitions, scope, and key metrics. However, the common thread across reporting requirements is that companies must measure their location-specific risk with regard to climate, deforestation, water, and human rights. Additionally, supply chain due diligence laws (e.g. California Transparency in Supply Chains Act; UK Modern Slavery Act) go further by requiring companies to assess risk and take action in their supply chains.
Let us make it easier
Third Partners, in partnership with Sourcemap, offers automated solutions for country-level, site-specific, and supply chain-wide risk assessment. As cost-effective alternatives to data analysis, these solutions serve organizations with anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 sites/suppliers. In addition to evaluating current risk, we can also help with scenario analysis, using forward-looking projections of water-, flood-, and climate-related risk.
Give us your list of sites and we do the rest, providing you with turnkey reporting from all of today’s risk-related data sources. You will receive:
(a) automated geospatial analysis resulting in clear reports and dashboards aligned with today’s popular reporting metrics; and
(b) advisory on data management within your organization, to help cleanly and consistently apply the latest ever-changing reporting standards.
Contact us today for a free consultation.