3D terrain
Fly to any place in Africa and see the ground in relief: valleys, ridges, flood plains and the slopes a landslide would follow.
54 countriesbare-earth DTM
Site atlas
Stand on the site before you sign the facility.
3D terrain anywhere in Africa, with roads, buildings and labels, line of sight through the built environment, hazard layers on the map, and a dossier for every counterparty that shows how its risk moves from today to 2090.
- Coverage
- 54 countries
- Map layers
- roads · buildings · labels
- Risk fingerprint
- today · 2030 · 2050 · 2090
Line of sight from the ridge to site S-2207
3D terrain · buildings on · flood depth 1-in-100 layer
terrainDTM · own pipelinelayerflood 1-in-100
Anywhere in Africa, in three dimensions
A site visit, without the flight.
A spreadsheet row says a warehouse is “near the river”. The atlas shows how near, how low, what stands between it and the water, and what the hazard layers say about the ground it sits on.
Line of sight
Draw a sight line from any point and see where terrain or buildings interrupt it, for towers, security, signage or simply understanding a site.
through buildings
Roads, buildings and labels
Switch reference layers on and off so the terrain reads like a place: the road a truck would take, the buildings around a site, the names on the map.
roadsbuildingslabels
Hazard layers on the map
Lay flood depth, fire risk, landslide susceptibility, seismic acceleration and heat over the terrain, and read the value at any site.
4 hazard families
Counterparty dossiers
Every counterparty, every site, four points in time.
A dossier gathers a counterparty’s sites and gives each one a risk fingerprint: one row per hazard, one column per horizon, so you can see at a glance which risks are already here and which arrive later.
- Fingerprint for today, 2030, 2050 and 2090, with CMIP6 SSP projections behind the future columns.
- Severity in words as well as colour: Low, At risk, Stressed, Stranded.
- Hazard curves and disaggregation for each site, one click from the fingerprint.
- The same site figures feed stress tests, so the dossier and the capital number agree.
CP-0417 · agri-processing · 3 sites
SSP2-4.5
- S-2207Cold store, river terraceStressed
- S-2213Packhouse, valley floorAt risk
- S-2240Warehouse, uplandLow
| Hazard | Today | 2030 | 2050 | 2090 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flood 1-in-100 | At risk | At risk | Stressed | Stressed |
| Heat stress | Low | At risk | At risk | Stressed |
| Landslide | Low | Low | At risk | At risk |
| Fire | Low | Low | Low | At risk |
| Seismic PGA | Low | Low | Low | Low |
Terrain & DTM pipeline
Flood models need the ground, not the rooftops.
A surface model includes buildings and trees, which water flows around, not over. ecosphere builds a bare-earth digital terrain model (DTM) for each area from the best source available, and reruns the terrain-based hazards whenever a better one is published.
Best available source, in a fixed order
- 1preferred
LiDAR
Airborne laser survey, where it exists. The most detailed bare-earth ground there is.
- 2next
Our own DTM pipeline
Bare-earth terrain built by ecosphere where no LiDAR is available.
- 3fallback
FABDEM
A global elevation model with forests and buildings removed.
- 4last resort
Copernicus DSM
A global surface model, used only when nothing better covers the area, and labelled as such.
Cross-section through a riverside site: surface vs bare earth
0.9 m of water at the building
flood 1-in-100 on the DTM
surface model: reads dry
surface model: reads dry
srcDTM v4 · own pipelineIllustrative
-
A new DTM is published
A better terrain model for an area passes the data contract and review, and is published as a new version.
- Event
- DTM published
-
Terrain runs start
2D flood modelling and landslide susceptibility for that area start on the new ground automatically, with no one having to remember.
- Runs
- terrain flood · landslide
-
Results arrive as a version
New flood depths and susceptibility reach the atlas and dossiers as a new version. The previous one stays readable, so earlier results remain reproducible.
- Lineage
- DTM version → hazard version
Hazard layers
Every hazard product, draped on the ground it describes.
The atlas shows the same hazard products used everywhere else in ecosphere, on the map and at the site, with a restrained single-hue scale and the value always available as a number.
| Layer | Family | What you read at a site |
|---|---|---|
| Flood depth, 1-in-100 year | Water | Depth of water expected once in a hundred years, from 2D modelling on terrain |
| Rainfall return periods | Water | How much rain falls in an event of a given rarity |
| Dam-release surge | Water | Exposure to water released downstream of a dam |
| Fire risk score | Fire | Relative likelihood and intensity of fire around the site |
| Landslide susceptibility | Geotechnical | How prone the slope is to failure, from the terrain model |
| Seismic PGA, 1-in-475 year | Geotechnical | Peak ground acceleration at the seismic design return period |
| Heat percentiles | Extreme temperature | How hot the hottest days get, against the local record |
| Comfort and humidex | Extreme temperature | Heat and humidity as people feel them |
Full definitions and sources are on Hazard products and Data & methods.
Questions it answers
What credit, underwriting and engineering teams ask of a site.
- How deep would a 1-in-100 flood be at this warehouse, and is that changing?Flood depth from 2D modelling on bare-earth terrain, with the fingerprint showing today against 2030, 2050 and 2090.
- Which of this counterparty’s sites carries most of the risk?The dossier ranks sites by severity, so the conversation starts with the one that matters.
- Can the tower on the ridge see the yard?Draw a line of sight and see whether terrain or a building gets in the way.
- Is the slope above the packhouse prone to landslides?Landslide susceptibility on the terrain model, rerun whenever a better DTM is published.
- What terrain was this flood depth computed on?Every hazard figure names its DTM source and version: LiDAR, our own pipeline, FABDEM or Copernicus DSM.
- When does heat become a problem for this site’s workers?Heat percentiles and comfort indicators across the four horizons, side by side.
See it on your own book
Bring a sample portfolio. Leave with a stress result.
In a working session we run a sample of your counterparties through a physical shock and a transition scenario, and walk you through every step of the chain from hazard to capital.