Making the Most of Your Water Risk Assessment

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESS Newswire / March 23, 2026 / Key Takeaways: Water Risk Assessments

• Water Risk Assessments (WRAs) help organizations identify physical, regulatory, and reputational water risks that may affect operations, supply chains, and long-term business resilience.

• A strong corporate water risk assessment combines global datasets, local expert validation, and site-level insights to accurately evaluate current and future water vulnerabilities.

• WRAs allow companies to prioritize high-risk locations, prepare for evolving water regulations, and manage climate-related water pressures.

• The results provide a foundation for water risk management and broader water stewardship strategies, helping businesses strengthen sustainability performance and operational continuity.

An estimated quarter of the world’s population (more than 2 billion people) live in areas of high water stress, according to the 2024 United Nations World Water Development Report. “High water stress” means that more than 80% of the available water resources in a region are consumed. As water stress grows globally, businesses of all sizes need to address their water-related risks to ensure uninterrupted operations.

Water Risk Assessments (WRAs) are a practical tool for companies across industries to understand their current and future water risks. By translating water risks to business risks, WRAs provide companies with a roadmap for making informed, proactive decisions. This foundational step helps your business stay ahead of water concerns and ever-changing regulations for a more resilient future.

What is a Water Risk Assessment?

A WRA identifies and evaluates water-related risks where a business has operational presence. This extends across three categories: physical, regulatory, and reputational risks.

• Physical water risks include water availability (whether there is too much or too little), water quality, climate change, and extreme weather events

• Regulatory water risks include both on-site permit compliance and broader water management considerations (such as water allocation schemes and access to safe drinking water)

• Reputational water risks are related to public perception and social tensions surrounding water use and pollution

WRAs identify how individual sites and their localized regions may be affected by all three types of water risk. This gives companies a holistic view of where and how their business operations may be vulnerable to water risks.

Why Would Your Business Want a Water Risk Assessment?

WRAs give companies a resource to plan for long-term business continuity. Understanding operations may be affected by local water issues like scarcity or flooding, plus the risks associated with regulatory changes, allows companies to reduce potential negative impacts, and pave the way for better water stewardship.

“You can’t manage water risks you haven’t measured, and assessment is the first step to resilience,” says Erik Foley, Senior Consultant and Sustainability Practice Lead at Antea Group.

Antea Group’s Methodology: A Three-Filter Process

Antea Group understands that while water is a global resource, an individual company’s water risk requires a hyper-local review of physical, regulatory, and reputational risks. We have developed a WRA methodology that can be applied to any business. The boundaries of a WRA can range from a single facility to hundreds of global sites and can even include a company’s supply chain footprint. We work to ensure the boundaries of the WRA meet the interests and needs of each client.

After setting the assessment boundaries, Antea Group applies our WRA methodology that leverages data from three filters to provide comprehensive and insightful results for each site.

Filter 1: External Datasets

Using the robust and globally recognized World Resources Institute (WRI) Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, Antea Group obtains location-specific data for 13 water risk indicators that span physical, regulatory, and reputational risks. This filter provides an initial, high-level screening of the water risks at each site.

Filter 2: Expert Validation

Antea Group utilizes our Inogen Alliance global network to have local water experts provide validation and add local perspectives to the data from Filter 1. Our water experts are located across the globe and provide the tailored, industry-specific, and hyper-local insights necessary for turning the WRA outputs into actionable, context-driven decision enablers.

Experts provide qualitative insights on risk drivers and local context, as well as quantitative scores for water-related risk across seven categories: overall business risk, future business risk, supply quantity, municipal infrastructure, watershed quality, regulations and governance, and social/media. This filter provides local validation of the information presented in the external datasets.

Filter 3: Risk Applicability Screening

Antea Group coordinates with the company to solicit site-level feedback on water-related challenges through an online survey tool. The online tool is a streamlined way for clients to gather the unique site-specific context on the current water context, water risk applicability, and current water-related challenges. This filter provides the site-specific applicability assessment of Filter 1 and 2 outputs.

The results of the three filters are combined to establish a dimensional view of current and future water risks for each site evaluated, with specific scoring indicating the external (Filter 1 and 2) and internal (Filter 3) risk evaluation. The resulting information allows companies to understand priority and severity of risk but also brings attention to sites where further evaluation is needed (when external and internal risk scores diverge).

What Makes Our Approach Unique: Setting the Stage for Water Stewardship Strategy

Data is important. Publicly available tools, like the WRI Aqueduct and WWF Water Risk Filter, are a wonderful starting place for understanding potential risk exposures. However, global datasets are models meant to be used for high-level assessments and cannot always capture the intricacies of the local hydrological context, or the complex regulatory frameworks governing water resources. For example, a facility may be located in a watershed where surface waters are highly polluted due to heavy industry, something that is likely to be flagged in the external datasets and classified as a high vulnerability for water supply contamination. But a local expert may determine that the municipality surrounding the facility is supplied only by surface water from a different catchment altogether that is less vulnerable to contamination. Our expert validation step allows our WRA results to be localized in a way that global datasets cannot capture. Including validation from the site itself may show us that the site relies on groundwater from a confined, unpolluted aquifer and does not rely on surface water at all. Capturing the local context is a necessity for a WRA to be informative and actionable.

WRAs pinpoint business vulnerabilities, laying the groundwork for a water stewardship strategy. Recognizing the importance of being able to support our clients in addressing vulnerabilities, Antea Group has developed an 8-Step Water Leadership Cycle as a framework to guide companies through addressing water risks. The cycle begins with a WRA followed by action planning and goal setting, supply chain engagement, performance tracking, and disclosure.

Take a look at a case study on how Antea Group applied this methodology to help a Data Center company gain a greater internal understanding of water as a business issue across its operations.

Making the Most of Your WRA Results

The high-level physical, regulatory, and reputational water risks identified by a WRA are valuable insights for businesses. Antea Group’s water stewardship team can support clients by turning WRA business insights into action. Whether supporting your business through expanding WRAs to your company’s overall water supply chain, looking closer at high-risk sites by performing source vulnerability assessments (SVAs), or guiding the company through the 8-Step Water Leadership Cycle to become water stewards, our team is here to meet your needs with a fit-for-purpose solution.

Ready to Act on Water Risk?

Water challenges are complex, but with the right information, they can be turned into opportunities for leadership and business resilience. WRAs help you understand the intersection of large-scale water challenges with the local scale of your operations. Antea Group’s Water Stewardship experts are ready to guide you through risk analysis, providing local insights for global projects.

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SOURCE: Antea Group

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