---
title: how to map what your property depends on
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/how-to-map-what-your-property-depends-on
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/how-to-map-what-your-property-depends-on.md
subtitle: "draw the map one ring wider than the deed, then decide what to keep"
category: how-to
---

# how to map what your property depends on

*draw the map one ring wider than the deed, then decide what to keep*

**A business continuity plan is a written plan for keeping your most important work going through a disruption and bringing the rest back in an order you chose in advance.** It usually lists the people, the site, the systems and the suppliers the work needs, the longest outage you can take for each, and who does what when one fails. Most plans map what sits inside the fence: the building, the systems, the people, the named suppliers. This how-to adds the ring outside the fence, where the water, the slope and the forest you run on actually come from.

It is for a plant manager, a continuity lead, a facilities director or a landowner. You need the plan you already have and an afternoon.

Before any building went up, the river valley, the forested watershed, the marsh, the aquifer and the lake were already doing their work, and they keep doing it whether or not anyone pays. Your property depends on them, and so do your neighbors. [**Ensurance**](/?from=guide) is built to give a living place an account so the ones who depend on it can pay for its keeping. The account is not the place, and no account stops a storm.

## why the map stops at the deed

Plans cover what an owner controls: the site, the flood zone, the generator, the supplier list. The eight events in this series came from somewhere else:

| property | what happened | where it came from |
|---|---|---|
| [A factory](/guide/the-loss-started-outside-the-property-line?from=guide) | Flooding from Helene led Baxter to temporarily close production at its North Cove plant in North Carolina in late September 2024 | The North Fork Catawba River valley around the plant |
| [A hospital](/guide/a-hospital-cannot-store-a-watershed?from=guide) | Mission Hospital in Asheville was without municipal water for 54 days after Helene | The city's water lines and the reservoir they carry from |
| [A chip fab](/guide/a-chip-fab-still-waits-for-rain?from=guide) | In early 2021 TSMC began ordering water by the truckload after a year with no typhoon landfall | The rain and the reservoirs it fills |
| [An industrial estate](/guide/the-factory-was-sound-the-floodplain-was-full?from=guide) | Seven major industrial estates in Thailand were affected by the 2011 floods | The flat land around the rivers |
| [An office corridor](/guide/the-office-park-stands-where-the-marsh-was?from=guide) | Automakers in Chennai halted production in the November–December 2015 floods | The Pallikaranai marsh and the lakes and river beds around the city |
| [A subdivision](/guide/a-lot-is-not-a-home-until-the-water-is-promised?from=guide) | In June 2023 Arizona paused new assured water supply approvals that rely on pumping groundwater in the Phoenix area | The aquifer |
| [A ski area](/guide/the-resort-never-owned-the-trees?from=guide) | Sierra-at-Tahoe reported the 2021 Caldor Fire was affecting about 1,600 of its 2,000 acres | The forest the lifts run through |
| [A canal](/guide/every-ship-spends-water-the-forest-gathered?from=guide) | In a dry 2023 the Panama Canal Authority cut daily transit slots as Gatun Lake fell | The rain on the lake's watershed |

None of these owners was careless, and nothing here says that keeping a source would have stopped any of these events. The point is narrower. In each case the owner's work leaned on something outside its line that, as far as these sources show, was not a line on its own plan.

## the cousins you already use

**ISO 22301**, the international standard for business continuity management systems, specifies requirements to "implement, maintain and improve a management system to protect against, reduce the likelihood of the occurrence of, prepare for, respond to and recover from disruptions when they arise." Its **business impact analysis** is the process of analyzing the impact of a disruption on the organization over time. If you run one, steps 1 and 2 below are the same habit pointed past the fence.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) offers **LEAP**: locate your interface with nature, evaluate your dependencies and impacts, assess your nature-related risks and opportunities, and prepare to respond and report. TNFD describes LEAP as an approach with assessment components, designed to be iterative and flexible. If you want the full nature dependency method in two lists, [how to write your two lists](/guide/how-to-write-your-two-lists?from=guide) has it. This post is the short version for one building and one plan.

## step 1: list what you cannot run a day without

Write down what stops your operation if it is gone for a day, a week and a season. Keep it physical: water, access, power, the raw material, cooling, the snow or the view if guests pay for it.

A hospital writes water for sterilizing and dialysis; a ski area writes snow and trees. Stop at ten lines.

## step 2: trace each line past the meter and the gate

For every line, ask where it comes from, and keep asking until you reach something that is not a pipe, a wire or a contract. The tap leads to the utility, the utility to a reservoir, the reservoir to a forested watershed. The road leads to a bridge and the bridge to a river that floods. The supplier's plant leads to the valley it sits in.

This is the ring outside the deed. *Draw the map one ring wider than the deed.* Often, more people lean on it than the owner first assumed.

## step 3: mark each source gray or natural, and who keeps it

Gray sources are built: the water utility, the levee, the power line, the tanker contract. Natural sources are living: the watershed, the floodplain, the marsh, the aquifer, the forest. Most lines have both. The hospital's water runs through pipes the city keeps and a watershed someone else keeps. The [natural infrastructure](/guide/what-natural-infrastructure-actually-is?from=guide) post explains why both count as infrastructure.

Next to each source, write who keeps it: a utility, an agency, a land trust, a forest office, a farm, nobody you can name. If you cannot name a keeper, that is the most important line on the page.

## step 4: write what you pay for each one today

Gray sources usually come with a bill: the water bill, the tap fee, the levee district assessment, the tanker contract. Natural sources usually come with none.

| source | gray or natural | who keeps it | what you pay today |
|---|---|---|---|
| City water | Gray | The utility | A monthly bill and a tap fee |
| The watershed above the reservoir | Natural | A city, a forest office or a land trust | Nothing directly |
| The levee | Gray | A levee district | An assessment |
| The floodplain upstream | Natural | Many owners | Nothing |
| Backup water | Gray | A tanker company | A contract, if you have one |

The empty cells in the last column are where your plan is thinnest.

## step 5: ask who else leans on the same source

A natural source rarely serves one property. The reservoir that serves a hospital serves the town. The floodplain under one estate is under its neighbors too. That is one reason a failure can reach a whole market, and one reason the cost of keeping the source can be shared. [What is a serviceshed?](/guide/what-is-a-serviceshed?from=guide) explains how to draw everyone a source serves.

Write the names you can find. Then turn it around. The hospitals that buy from the Baxter plant and the shippers who cross the canal depend on those properties; your own list of [who depends on you](/guide/who-depends-on-you?from=guide) is the other half of the map.

## step 6: find the account, or suggest one

Open [explore](/explore?from=guide) and look for each natural source by name, or start at the account for its kind of work: [water-cycle.syndicate](/water-cycle.syndicate?from=guide), [wildfire-resilience.syndicate](/wildfire-resilience.syndicate?from=guide) or [coastal-resilience.syndicate](/coastal-resilience.syndicate?from=guide).

Most sources will not have an account yet. Name yours under the parent it belongs to and open it as a suggestion, for example [the forest above our intake, under water-cycle.syndicate](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=water-cycle.syndicate&name=the%20forest%20above%20our%20intake&from=guide). Replace the sample name with yours. A suggestion proposes; a person reviews it. If the place has people who keep it, ask them first. The account is not title, standing or personhood, and the keepers still keep the place and sign. Accounts are built so that a person confirms each action.

## step 7: take the largest two or three to the money question

Pick the two or three natural sources whose failure would land on your largest bill: avoided capital spend, avoided operating cost, protected earnings, or kept insurability. [What ensurance saves you](/guide/what-ensurance-saves-you?from=guide) names those four bills.

For a US place, [place](/place?from=guide) reads the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) expected annual loss by peril. That is a model output, not your loss, and it does not compute what keeping a source would remove; that part of our engine is planned, not built. [What a source is worth paying for](/guide/what-a-source-is-worth-paying-for?from=guide) turns an avoided loss into the most you should pay, and [how an intervention lowers the loss](/guide/how-an-intervention-lowers-the-loss?from=guide) shows the method.

:::johnson
**a continuity plan that names a supplier should also name a source.** Seven steps, one afternoon, one page. Start with the line you cannot run a day without.

[Find your first source on explore →](/explore?from=guide)
:::

## where to start, by reader

| reader | start here |
|---|---|
| Companies with a plant, a campus or a supply chain | [Corporations](/solutions/corporations?from=guide&topic=outside-the-property-line) |
| Ports, canals, campuses and other infrastructure operators | [Infrastructure operators](/solutions/infrastructure-operators?from=guide&topic=outside-the-property-line) |
| Owners of land and buildings | [Landowners](/solutions/landowners?from=guide&topic=outside-the-property-line) |

Write the list, look up your place, find or suggest one account. For help with the rest, the [services](/services?from=guide&topic=outside-the-property-line) page lists the services we offer and coordinate, or [talk to someone who can help map your sources](/contact?from=guide&topic=outside-the-property-line). Bring the page.

This is not insurance, legal or tax advice.

## frequently asked questions

### what is a business continuity plan?

A business continuity plan is a written plan for keeping your most important work going through a disruption and restoring the rest in a set order. A good one also names the sources outside your fence that the work depends on.

### what should a business continuity plan include about suppliers and utilities?

Name each supplier and utility, what you would lose without it for a day, a week and a season, and your backup. Then trace each one past the meter to where it comes from, mark it gray or natural, and write who keeps it and what you pay for it today.

### what if the source i depend on has no account?

Name it under the parent it belongs to and open it as a suggestion, for example [under water-cycle.syndicate](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=water-cycle.syndicate&name=the%20forest%20above%20our%20intake&from=guide). A person reviews every suggestion, and the people who keep the place still keep it.

## sources

[ISO 22301:2019, Security and resilience — Business continuity management systems — Requirements (document preview)](https://cdn.standards.iteh.ai/samples/75106/93796e84e77c4ea283721dff7333671e/ISO-22301-2019.pdf) — Scope (clause 1) and the definition of business impact analysis (3.5)

[TNFD, Guidance on the identification and assessment of nature-related issues: the LEAP approach, v1.1, October 2023](https://tnfd.global/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Guidance_on_the_identification_and_assessment_of_nature-related_Issues_The_TNFD_LEAP_approach_V1.1_October2023.pdf) — The four phases, and LEAP as an iterative, flexible approach

[NBC News, hospitals conserve IV fluid after Helene](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/hospitals-take-steps-conserve-iv-fluid-supply-helene-strikes-critical-rcna173861) — Baxter's temporary closure of production at North Cove; flooding on the North Fork Catawba River in North Cove (photo caption)

[ASPR TRACIE, Mission accomplished: how a hospital sheltered in place after Hurricane Helene](https://asprtracie.hhs.gov/documents/mission-accomplished--how-a-hospital-sheltered-in-place-kept-patients-and-staff-safe-and-maintained-operations-after-hurricane-helene.pdf) — Mission Hospital without municipal water for 54 days

[The Register, TSMC and Taiwan's drought, February 2021](https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/24/tsmc_drought/) — Water by the truckload; no typhoon landfall in 2020

[Insurance Journal, December 2011](https://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/mag-features/2011/12/05/226165.htm) — Seven major Thai industrial estates affected

[Conventus Law, the Chennai floods and the insurance impact](https://conventuslaw.com/report/india-the-chennai-floods-the-insurance-impact/) — Automakers halted manufacturing in the floods of 8 November to 4 December 2015

[Quarles, Arizona is not out of water](https://www.quarles.com/newsroom/publications/combating-misperception-arizona-is-not-out-of-water-construction-has-not-been-suspended) — The June 1, 2023 pause on new groundwater-based assured water supply determinations in the Phoenix area

[Sierra-at-Tahoe, Caldor Fire update](https://sierraattahoe.com/caldor-fire-update/) — The resort's own update on the acres the fire was affecting

[The News Minute, Chennai's IT corridor and the Pallikaranai wetland](https://www.thenewsminute.com/tamil-nadu/chennai-rains-why-does-the-citys-it-corridor-flood-after-heavy-rains) — The corridor beside the Pallikaranai wetland and its flooding in heavy rain, including 2015

[Waterways Journal, November 2023](https://www.waterwaysjournal.net/2023/11/15/panama-canal-restrictions-extended-deepened/) — Panama Canal booking slots cut as Gatun Lake fell

## the series

1. [the loss started outside the property line](/guide/the-loss-started-outside-the-property-line?from=guide) — read first
2. [a hospital cannot store a watershed](/guide/a-hospital-cannot-store-a-watershed?from=guide)
3. [a chip fab still waits for rain](/guide/a-chip-fab-still-waits-for-rain?from=guide)
4. [the factory was sound. the floodplain was full](/guide/the-factory-was-sound-the-floodplain-was-full?from=guide)
5. [the office park stands where the marsh was](/guide/the-office-park-stands-where-the-marsh-was?from=guide)
6. [a lot is not a home until the water is promised](/guide/a-lot-is-not-a-home-until-the-water-is-promised?from=guide)
7. [the resort never owned the trees](/guide/the-resort-never-owned-the-trees?from=guide)
8. [every ship spends water the forest gathered](/guide/every-ship-spends-water-the-forest-gathered?from=guide)
9. [what a source is worth paying for](/guide/what-a-source-is-worth-paying-for?from=guide)
10. **how to map what your property depends on** — this post