Lenses and readings

The baseline is read through each steward’s lens, then once as a whole. Each lens is a projection of reviewed findings, not a separate argument.

9 min read0 figures6 tables30 notesNR-COUNTRY-USA-2026-BASELINE

Contents

6.1Three lenses

One edition, read by each steward. The lens of this site comes first.

GCRI · KEY T

Technical Truth

The evidence supports a coupled reading of American risk. Losses are rising with frequency; the grid couples heat and cold to water and health; and insurance is retreating where risk is highest. Evidence is strongest for losses and emissions, and weakest for state-level insurance availability and cross-system dependencies.

FIN-002 · FIN-003 · ENE-006 · SYS-012

GRF · KEY M

Public Meaning

For most Americans risk arrives as a smoke-filled summer, a power cut in a heat wave or a non-renewed home policy. The baseline asks that these be read as one system, and that public debate weigh who carries the losses insurance no longer covers.

HLT-009 · FIN-003 · CLI-005

GRA · KEY F

Capital Meaning

Readiness implications only. The world’s largest insured losses, a retreating homeowners market²¹ and large flood exposure outside private cover⁴⁰ show where finance-readiness evidence will matter. Nothing here is advice, a rating or an approval.

FIN-002 · FIN-003

NEXUS

Synthesis

The United States is deeply observed and unevenly protected. The 2027 programme should test the Western heat–fire–grid pathway, map insurance availability by state and peril, and measure reliability margins as data-centre load grows.

SYS-012 · A-01 · A-02 · A-03

6.2GCRI reading: the model card

GCRI’s reading of this edition is its model card: what the national model is, what it computes and where it stops. It is printed in full in Annex A, with the methods it belongs to. Annex A, methodology

6.3Global Risks Forum reading: editorial essays

Four signed essays by the Reports editorial team set out the positions this edition takes. They are interpretation, labelled as such; the evidence they draw on is in the findings register.

Insurance has absorbed most American disaster losses. Where it now withdraws, on the wildfire edge, on hurricane coasts, it is reporting what its models see. The retreat of cover is the clearest market signal of rising risk, and it shifts losses onto households and public budgets before any law does.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 01

The retreat of cover is the signal

Winter Storm Uri showed that when the grid fails, water, heat, health and communications fail with it. As data centres add load and extremes intensify, reliability is no longer an energy question alone; it is the coupling that holds the other systems together.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 02

The grid is the coupling

Heat-related deaths reached a record in 2023, mostly out of sight, in homes without cooling. Heat rarely appears in loss tables, yet it couples power demand, health services and work. It deserves the planning attention given to storms.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 03

Heat is the quiet disaster

The Colorado River was divided in wetter decades than these. Its first shortage in 2021 marked the point where allocation met hydrology. The same mismatch is quietly playing out in the aquifers beneath the country’s farms.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 04

Water was allocated for a wetter century

6.4Global Risks Alliance reading: q1 2027 readiness pack

The registers that open the first operational quarter. At baseline each is initialised from this edition.

Table 6.1Q1 2027 readiness pack
Item	Register	State at baseline	First Q1 2027 entry
E1	National risk state delta	baseline set by this edition	changes against the baseline
E2	WEFH+B state delta	five system readings set	indicator updates and freshness
E3	Agenda and Portfolio movement	eight agenda items · six proposed objects	admission decisions
E4	NWG delivery register	no groups yet	first monthly outputs
E5	NNC capability register	membership opens in Q1 2027	first contributions
E6	NLC questions and challenges	none yet	first challenge log
E7	Foundry technical state	environment prepared	first sealed cut
E8	Publication candidates	twelve findings carried forward	PUBLISH · HOLD dispositions
E9	Universe readiness	one candidate mission	admission and role spine
E10	Correction register	none	first correction cycle

Publication dispositions

Publish
Hold
Needs evidence
Restricted
Superseded

6.5Nexus Standards reading: standards and regulatory watch

Instruments that shape the systems in this edition, by status on the retrieval date. The edition assesses no one’s compliance.

IN FORCE
ADOPTED
SUBMITTED
UNDER REVIEW
PUBLISHED · VOLUNTARY

Table 6.2Standards and regulatory watch
Instrument	Body	Scope	Status	Relevance
Paris Agreement, United States withdrawal³⁰	UNFCCC	international	WITHDRAWN · JAN 2026	emissions framework
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act²⁸	U.S. Congress	federal	IN FORCE	infrastructure resilience
Inflation Reduction Act, as amended in 2025²⁹	U.S. Congress	federal	IN FORCE · AMENDED	clean-energy credits
NSM-22 on critical infrastructure¹⁹	The White House	federal	ISSUED 2024	resilience roles
National Critical Functions¹⁸	CISA	federal	PUBLISHED	critical infrastructure
Export controls on advanced computing³⁴	BIS	federal	IN FORCE · UPDATED	chips and AI
Critical minerals list¹²	USGS	federal	PUBLISHED 2022	supply security
Sendai Framework 2015–2030	UNDRR	international	ADOPTED 2015	disaster risk reduction

Changed since 2024

The US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement took effect in January 2026³⁰
Clean-energy tax credits were amended in 2025²⁹
NOAA retired its billion-dollar disaster series in 2025¹⁵

To watch in 2027

Colorado River operating guidelines after 2026
State reforms of residual-market insurers
NERC reliability standards for extreme weather

6.6Risk Academy reading: literature and evidence review, science and assessments

The review behind this edition covers peer-reviewed science, national and international assessments and the institutional reports that bind its findings. Full systematic reviews begin in Q1 2027 for each agenda item.

Review protocol

Question: What does the published evidence establish about the United States’ coupled water, energy, food, health and biodiversity risks?
Sources searched: peer-reviewed literature; federal assessments and statistics; state and industry data; loss records
Window: releases available at evidence close, 30 September 2026
Selection: sources that bind or contextualise a finding in this edition
Next step: systematic reviews for agenda items A-01 to A-05 in Q1 2027

Table 6.3Peer-reviewed science and assessments
Reference	Type	Year	Role	Used for
Crimmins et al. (eds.)³	assessment	2023	supports	warming, disaster frequency
Howard et al.⁹	journal article	2024	supports	heat deaths
Lee and Romero (eds.)²³	assessment	2023	context	global forcing
Zscheischler et al.²⁴	journal article	2018	framework	compound events
Buldyrev et al.²⁵	journal article	2010	framework	cascades
McElwee et al. (eds.)²⁶	assessment	2024	context	nexus interlinkages

Table 6.4Institutional reports
Reference	Issuer	Year	Role	Used for
GHG Inventory¹	EPA	2024	supports	emissions
Cold weather outages³¹	FERC · NERC	2021	supports	grid failure
Homeowners insurance markets²¹	Treasury FIO	2025	supports	insurance retreat
National Risk Index¹⁴	FEMA	2023	context	hazard exposure
National Preparedness Report²⁰	FEMA	2024	context	capability

Table 6.5Industry and loss data
Reference	Issuer	Year	Role	Used for
Annual catastrophe figures²	Munich Re	2026	supports	losses
Billion-dollar disasters¹⁵	NOAA NCEI	2025	supports	frequency
Data-centre energy⁶	LBNL	2024	supports	electricity
Summer reliability³²	NERC	2025	supports	grid margins
Energy and AI²⁷	IEA	2025	context	load growth

Table 6.6Standards, regulation and national official sources
Reference	Issuer	Year	Role	Used for
Water use 2015⁷	USGS	2018	supports	withdrawals
Colorado shortage⁸	Bureau of Reclamation	2021	supports	water
Food security¹¹	USDA ERS	2024	supports	food
Census of Agriculture²²	USDA NASS	2024	supports	production
Biodiversity in Focus¹⁰	NatureServe	2023	supports	species at risk
Critical minerals¹²¹³	USGS	2022–25	supports	minerals

Where the evidence agrees

Disaster frequency and losses are rising³¹⁵
Heat is a growing and under-counted health risk⁹
The West faces structural water shortage⁸

Where it is unsettled

How fast data-centre load will grow⁶
How insurance markets will adjust in high-risk states²¹
How much warming is attributable in individual events

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

21Federal Insurance Office (ed.), Analyses of U.S. Homeowners Insurance Markets, 2018–2022: Climate-Related Risks and Other Factors. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC, January 2025.back
40Federal Emergency Management Agency (ed.), National Flood Insurance Program: program description and policy statistics. FEMA, Washington, DC, retrieved 2026-09-30.back
30UNFCCC (ed.), Paris Agreement, and notification of withdrawal by the United States of America (effective January 2026). United Nations, New York.back
28U.S. Congress (ed.), Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Public Law 117-58. Washington, DC, 2021.back
29U.S. Congress (ed.), Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Public Law 117-169, as amended by Public Law 119-21 (2025). Washington, DC.back
19The White House (ed.), National Security Memorandum on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience (NSM-22). Washington, DC, April 2024.back
18Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (ed.), National Critical Functions: An Evolved Lens for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience. CISA, Washington, DC, 2019.back
34U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (ed.), export controls on advanced computing and semiconductor manufacturing items. Federal Register, October 2022, as updated.back
12U.S. Geological Survey (ed.), “2022 Final List of Critical Minerals.” Federal Register, vol. 87, 24 February 2022.back
15NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (ed.), U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, 1980–2024. NOAA NCEI, Asheville, NC, January 2025.back
3A. R. Crimmins, C. W. Avery, D. R. Easterling, K. E. Kunkel, B. C. Stewart and T. K. Maycock (eds.), Fifth National Climate Assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, 2023.back
9J. T. Howard, N. Androne, K. C. Alcover and A. R. Santos-Lozada, “Trends of heat-related deaths in the US, 1999–2023,” JAMA, vol. 332, no. 14, pp. 1203–1204, 2024.back
23H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.), Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. IPCC, Geneva, 2023.back
24J. Zscheischler, S. Westra, B. J. J. M. van den Hurk et al., “Future climate risk from compound events,” Nature Climate Change, vol. 8, pp. 469–477, 2018.back
25S. V. Buldyrev, R. Parshani, G. Paul, H. E. Stanley and S. Havlin, “Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks,” Nature, vol. 464, pp. 1025–1028, 2010.back
26P. D. McElwee, P. A. Harrison, T. L. van Huysen et al. (eds.), Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health. IPBES secretariat, Bonn, 2024. doi:10.5281/zenodo.13850054. doi:10.5281/zenodo.13850054 back
1U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (ed.), Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990–2022. EPA, Washington, DC, April 2024.back
31Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation (eds.), February 2021 Cold Weather Outages in Texas and the South Central United States. FERC and NERC, Washington, DC, 2021.back
14Federal Emergency Management Agency (ed.), National Risk Index: Technical Documentation. FEMA, Washington, DC, 2023.back
20Federal Emergency Management Agency (ed.), 2024 National Preparedness Report. FEMA, Washington, DC, 2024.back
2Munich Re (ed.), Natural disasters in 2025: NatCatSERVICE full-year figures. Munich Re, Munich, January 2026.back
6A. Shehabi, S. J. Smith, A. Hubbard et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, December 2024.back
32North American Electric Reliability Corporation (ed.), 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment. NERC, Atlanta, GA, 2025.back
27International Energy Agency (ed.), Energy and AI. World Energy Outlook Special Report. IEA, Paris, 2025.back
7C. A. Dieter, M. A. Maupin, R. R. Caldwell et al., Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2015, Circular 1441. U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA, 2018.back
8U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (ed.), “Reclamation announces 2022 operating conditions for Lake Powell and Lake Mead.” News release, Washington, DC, August 2021.back
11USDA Economic Research Service (ed.), Household Food Security in the United States in 2023. USDA ERS, Washington, DC, December 2024.back
22USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (ed.), 2022 Census of Agriculture. USDA NASS, Washington, DC, 2024.back
10NatureServe (ed.), Biodiversity in Focus: United States Edition. NatureServe, Arlington, VA, 2023.back
13U.S. Geological Survey (ed.), Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025. USGS, Reston, VA, 2025.back

Cite this chapter

Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). Chapter 6: Lenses and readings. In United States Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: The State of the United States’ Interdependent Systems (Baseline Edition 2026, Report No. NR-COUNTRY-USA-2026-BASELINE) [Draft under review]. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI).

Every citation form of the whole report, BibTeX and RIS included, is on the edition home. Cite this report