Is Your Business Prepared For A Weather-Related Disaster? 08-05

Is Your Business Prepared For A Weather-Related Disaster?

1. Make sure you’re insured. This sounds simple enough, but it’s always good to know what kind of coverage you have. You may have cut back a little when economic times were tough, but now that the economy has picked up, it’s time to get the necessary level of protection and verify you have the coverage you think you’re paying for.

We know the storms are coming. Are you prepared? Satellite image of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico near its peak Category 5 intensity (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We’re in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season, and with a single storm cycle our world can get turned upside down. A new map released by Climate Central, an independent organization of scientists and journalists, shows that over 3,000 coastal cities and towns are threatened by rising sea levels. Climate change deniers can say what they will, but the facts are that sea levels have already risen 6.7 inches in the last century, according to NASA.

So knowing that a weather-related catastrophe is possible (if not likely) here are few business preparations to make:

2. Have a contingency plan. If you’re a brick and mortar store and a natural disaster prevented you from opening your doors, what are you prepared to do? First, are you financially stable enough to weather such a storm? Do you have a plan for your employees? Have you created a call list (employees, insurance company, suppliers, etc.)? If you are a company doing business online, can you stay online? Where are your servers located?1. Make sure you’re insured. 

This sounds simple enough, but it’s always good to know what kind of coverage you have. You may have cut back a little when economic times were tough, but now that the economy has picked up, it’s time to get the necessary level of protection and verify you have the coverage you think you’re paying for.

3. Protect your assets. If you have physical inventory, make sure you have a plan to keep it protected. Sometimes, however, that’s not possible. Perhaps it would be prudent to carrying less inventory when you know a storm is brewing. If your business lives online, make sure you have backups of your backups and then make sure those backups are housed in various physical locations. In fact…

4. Move MOVE +2.16% your data to higher, dryer ground. You can find data centers all over the country. If you have a third-party company host your website, find out where they keep their servers and what their plan is in case of emergency. Many hosts will post information about their data centers online.

5. Diversify. This is a long-term solution that you need to think about. If one storm can wipe out a decade’s worth of work and stability, it’s time to think about ways you can diversify your security. Perhaps that means new revenue sources, new store locations, or new product lines. This could mean generating more revenue online where physical location doesn’t play as big a role.

Don’t ignore today’s realities. We know the sea levels are rising. We know that storms are getting stronger, and we know that our country’s infrastructure is in serious need of repair. The Environmental Business International , a strategic market intelligence company, recently released a report estimating that the climate change adaptation industry will reach $1 billion by 2015 and $2 billion by 2020. Remember, industries don’t double in size for no reason.

On the bright side, you don’t need to spend billions to be prepared, however doing nothing and having your dreams washed away would be incalculable.