Overview
- AlphaGeo published the Climate Risk & Resilience Index on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, placing Chicago first with a physical risk score of 12, a resilience-adjusted risk (RAJ) score of 8, and an adaptation rate of 33.3%.
- The index separates a city’s raw physical exposure to hazards from a RAJ that accounts for adaptation, and it reports an adaptation rate that measures the percent reduction in physical risk produced by existing measures.
- AlphaGeo credited Chicago’s top spot to its inland geography that avoids tropical storms and sea-level threats and to investments such as the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (Deep Tunnel), the Office of Emergency Management, cooling centers, and green infrastructure.
- Local experts and reporting caution that the ranking is comparative because Chicago still faces intensified convective rainfall, urban heat islands, basement flooding and stark neighborhood-level differences in risk, and the Deep Tunnel nearly reached capacity after July storms prompting a West Side rainwater storage pilot.
- The index highlights large global gaps in readiness, with many South Asian cities — including Dhaka, Karachi and several Pakistani cities — among the least resilient, underscoring how higher physical exposure and lower adaptation rates raise disaster risk and humanitarian need.