Business Guidance for Adapting Your Business to Impactful Weather
A practical guide for small and medium-sized enterprises
Introduction
Global warming is causing a shift in our long-term weather conditions. Average global temperatures have risen by around 1.2 degrees over the last 150 years. The rate of warming is getting faster, since the 1980’s the rate has almost doubled compared to 1900-1980. These changes are already affecting our local environment and challenging livelihoods, businesses and wildlife.
This workbook is designed to help small and medium size businesses to understand the potential risks of impactful weather. While you cannot prevent flooding, heatwaves, storms, or droughts, you can reduce their impact through preparedness, targeted investments, and effective planning.
Disruptive weather events can affect different sectors of a business. Understanding how your business will be affected is a crucial first step. When preparing and making plans this should be an all-inclusive process. Participation with staff across the organisation, especially colleagues from finance, marketing, procurement, logistics and operations is encouraged.
This business guidance for adapting your business to impactful weather will cover the topics below:
General Preparedness
- How to strengthen overall resilience to impactful weather
Flooding
- How to find out if you are in a flood risk area
- How to find out about flood warnings
- How to prepare for flooding
Intense Heat, Drought, Wildfires & Low Temperatures
- How to find heat risk information
- How heat, drought and low temperatures could impact your business
- How to prepare for hot days
- How to prepare for drought conditions
- How to prepare for the impact of wildfires
- How to prepare for the cold
Storms
- How storms could impact the business
- How to prepare for storms