First Street

The organization functions by developing property-level climate risk models based on transparent, peer-reviewed methodologies. Initially focused on flood risk, the foundation has expanded its research to include perils such as wildfire, extreme heat, and wind. Its models analyze past, present, and future risks for properties across the United States, factoring in environmental changes like sea-level rise and shifting precipitation patterns. For instance, its flood model considers flooding from rainfall, rivers, tides, and storm surge to calculate risk probabilities. These complex datasets are the product of collaborations with over 80 scientists and researchers from leading academic institutions and firms.

First Street generates revenue through data license agreements and partnerships, which helps to fund its ongoing research. For-profit entities can purchase access to the granular, property-level data via an API, while aggregated summary statistics are made available for free to the public, academics, and non-profits through platforms like the AWS Registry of Open Data. This dual approach allows the foundation to serve a wide range of clients, from individual homeowners to large financial institutions, real estate platforms like CoStar, and government agencies, including the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Congressional Budget Office.

The foundation's primary public-facing product is Risk Factor™ (formerly Flood Factor), a free online tool that provides a risk score from 1 to 10 for individual properties. This platform visualizes the data, detailing a property's thirty-year risk from various climate perils. The models have undergone significant enhancements, including migrating to advanced climate scenarios (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) and developing a proprietary precipitation model to improve accuracy over previous standards like NOAA's Atlas 14. These continuous, peer-reviewed updates ensure the data remains current and reflects the latest scientific understanding, addressing information asymmetries and helping stakeholders make informed decisions in the face of a changing climate.