Mitiga Solutions EarthScan: Barcelona supercomputing science that tells companies what floods, heat and wildfire will cost their assets

The problem

Southern Europe is a hotspot for several climate risks at once. The European Environment Agency’s first European Climate Risk Assessment found it is particularly exposed to wildfires and to the effects of heat and water scarcity on farming, outdoor work and health, and that climate extremes can raise insurance premiums and threaten assets and mortgages (EEA).

Companies need to know which of their sites are exposed and what that could cost. Many also now have to disclose it. Mitiga says most firms still plan with historical weather data rather than the climates their assets will face, and that classic catastrophe models are built mainly from past events. Its 2024 funding release noted that disclosure of physical climate risk is becoming mandatory across the EU and the UK for large companies and regulated financial firms (Mitiga).

The product

EarthScan is a software as a service platform, also available through an API, that rates physical climate risk for anything from one building to a global portfolio (Mitiga). Key features:

• Hazards: acute hazards such as flood, wildfire and wind, and chronic ones such as heat, drought and changing rainfall, individually or combined.
• Time span: forward-looking simulations from 1970 to 2100 in five-year increments, across three IPCC-aligned scenarios.
• Outputs: standardised A to F ratings, return periods from 2 to 1,000 years, exceedance probabilities and Climate Value at Risk, which estimates potential losses.
• Reporting: outputs mapped to the EU’s CSRD reporting standard ESRS E1, IFRS S2 and TCFD.
• Ease of use: users upload a CSV of asset locations or connect via API, with no modelling expertise needed.

Alongside EarthScan, Mitiga sells physics-based risk models to insurers. Its Mitiga Fire System combines ground data, physics-based fire models and machine learning to predict where wildfires may ignite and how they could spread, from a few days ahead to seasonal and long-term horizons (Mitiga).

How it works

1. Climate data: EarthScan starts from the global CMIP6 and regional CORDEX climate model ensembles used by the IPCC.
2. Signals Engine: Mitiga’s own engine corrects bias, downscales the data and validates it against more than 100,000 weather stations.
3. Local modelling: Bayesian models and, for fire, physics-based simulations run on high-performance computers sharpen the results for each location.
4. Finance: hazard intensity is translated into ratings and Climate Value at Risk for each asset.
5. Action: dashboards and reports feed site selection, due diligence, insurance and disclosure (Mitiga).

Timeline

Date	Milestone
2018	Mitiga founded as a spin-off of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center
May 2023	EUR 13.25m Series A led by Kibo Ventures, with Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund
20 Jun 2023	UK firm Cervest, original developer of EarthScan, enters administration
25 Jun 2023	Mitiga buys Cervest’s intellectual property and intangible assets
5 Jun 2024	EUR 8m Series A extension led by Paris-based Elaia
19 Feb 2026	EIC Accelerator award: EUR 2.4m grant plus EUR 6m equity
Jul 2026	Wildfire modelling for Barcelona under the EU-funded CARMINE project

Impact and numbers

• Customers: in 2023 the Barcelona Supercomputing Center listed clients including insurers and brokers AXA Climate, Howden and Willis Towers Watson, companies such as Suez, Indra and Safran, and public bodies such as EUROCONTROL, UNDP and the Danish Red Cross. Mitiga then had about 30 staff in Spain and the UK (BSC).
• Funding: the 2023 Series A was backed by Kibo Ventures, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, Nationwide Ventures, Faber and CREAS Impacto. The 2024 extension aimed to grow EarthScan in Europe, and the platform is available worldwide on Microsoft AppSource (Mitiga).
• Cervest rescue: Cervest had raised over USD 40m to build EarthScan but could not close a new round; all 71 staff were made redundant before administrators sold its technology to Mitiga (Interpath, Mitiga).
• Energy: with one of the world’s largest pure-play renewable energy companies, Mitiga built a system that estimates how climate hazards damage and age solar and wind assets and what downtime will cost. The European Innovation Council backed it in 2026 (Mitiga).
• Cities: under CARMINE, an EU-funded project on climate-resilient development pathways for metropolitan regions, Mitiga scientists are combining climate models, digital twins and local knowledge to map future wildfire risk around Barcelona, alongside the Pau Costa Foundation (Mitiga).

Honest caveats. Climate risk ratings depend heavily on the climate models, scenarios and assumptions behind them, and downscaling global models to a single site adds uncertainty. Mitiga’s claims of “science-grade” accuracy and independent verification come from its own website; it does not publish a full public validation of EarthScan. The product began life at Cervest, which failed in 2023, a reminder that this market is crowded and hard to make profitable. Mitiga itself has shifted focus: its EIC release describes a “strategic pivot” in 2024 towards energy assets. Ratings tell a company where it is exposed, but they do not reduce the risk; that still needs spending on defences, insurance or relocation.

What’s next

With the EIC money, Mitiga plans to scale what it calls the first climate risk intelligence solution built specifically for energy assets, from renewables to the electric grid. It is recruiting onshore solar and wind operators and transmission and distribution system operators into an early adopter programme (Mitiga). In Barcelona, the CARMINE Living Labs will test measures such as prescribed burning, grazing and nature-based land management against the modelled fire risk.

Why it matters for Europe / green buyers

The EEA warned that Europe’s adaptation is not keeping pace with rising risks and that some measures take so long that action is needed now. Tools like EarthScan let European companies and investors spot exposed sites before buying or building, report under CSRD with a consistent method, and estimate whether adaptation spending pays off. For renewable energy operators, knowing how heat, hail or wildfire will age a solar or wind farm helps keep Europe’s clean power supply reliable.

In India, the Reserve Bank of India published a draft disclosure framework on climate-related financial risks on 28 February 2024, covering scheduled commercial banks, large NBFCs and all-India financial institutions (RBI). As Indian lenders start to measure the physical risk in their loan books, forward-looking asset-level data of the kind EarthScan provides will be in demand.

Sources & image credits

1. Mitiga Solutions, “EarthScan” product page: https://www.mitigasolutions.com/earthscan
2. Mitiga Solutions, “Risk models” (Mitiga Fire System): https://www.mitigasolutions.com/risk-models
3. Barcelona Supercomputing Center, “BSC spin-off Mitiga Solutions raises €13 million to develop climate risk prediction technology” (May 2023): https://www.bsc.es/news/bsc-news/bsc-spin-mitiga-solutions-raises-%E2%82%AC13-million-develop-climate-risk-prediction-technology
4. Interpath Advisory, “Administrators appointed to Cervest Limited” (Jun 2023): https://interpath.com/media-hub/articles/administrators-appointed-to-cervest-limited/
5. Mitiga Solutions, “Mitiga Solutions acquires Cervest’s intellectual property rights” (5 Jul 2023): https://www.mitigasolutions.com/press/mitiga-solutions-acquires-cervests-intellectual-property-rights
6. Mitiga Solutions, “Mitiga announces a €8m Series A extension round led by Paris-based Elaia” (5 Jun 2024): https://www.mitigasolutions.com/press/mitiga-annouces-series-a-extension-round
7. Mitiga Solutions, “Mitiga Solutions awarded EIC Accelerator funding to support breakthrough in energy-focused climate intelligence” (19 Feb 2026): https://www.mitigasolutions.com/press/mitiga-solutions-awarded-eic-accelerator-funding-to-support-breakthrough-in-energy-focused-climate-intelligence
8. Mitiga Solutions, “Fighting fire with fire: preparing Barcelona for a hotter future” (13 Jul 2026): https://www.mitigasolutions.com/press/fighting-fire-with-fire-preparing-barcelona-for-a-hotter-future
9. European Environment Agency, “Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks” (Mar 2024): https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/newsroom/news/europe-is-not-prepared-for
10. Reserve Bank of India, “RBI invites comments on the Draft Disclosure framework on Climate-related Financial Risks, 2024” (28 Feb 2024): https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=57408

Images:

• “Valencia Floods” by NASA Earth Observatory (Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the US Geological Survey), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Valencia_Floods_(153533_-_41030_lrg).jpg