One coastal community in Massachusetts is preparing to spend the next nine months diving into the wonky insurance issues plaguing a critical 500-property zone that’s vulnerable to sea level rise.

The rest of the state might want to pay attention.

Plymouth, a seaside town known for the arrival four centuries ago of the Pilgrims to its shores, is now confronting a volatile future as encroaching waters threaten its people, economy, and tax base.

So, the town of 68,000 has launched an effort, backed with nearly $300,000 in state money, to figure out what to do about the potential higher insurance costs and lost tax revenue preparing to wreak havoc on communities like Plymouth as the impacts of climate change intensify.

InnSure, a Cambridge-based nonprofit that helps communities navigate insurance markets through local planning, is building a digital platform that models how different building improvements and climate resiliency projects within the specific zone in Plymouth would affect insurance costs and reduce risk to extreme weather events.

The new system, which builds on a pilot project launched in Salem last year, will be able to break down benefits as granular as, say, what happens if 300 of the 500 identified properties are raised by three feet, or if 200 properties install upgraded fortified roofs to protect against wind damage, or if the town installs a new marsh at the shoreline.

The idea is that both town leaders and individual property owners will be able to determine what investments they should make in order to minimize risk — and therefore lower their insurance premiums.

To Steve Brandt, chief development officer at InnSure, that means that town climate, energy, and planning officials are “firing up” the desktop application “every day to help inform decisions around the community.”

“There are so many incredible resilience efforts happening here in Plymouth, but where the disappointment comes is, ‘Hey, we did all this great work, we spent all this money. Why doesn’t the insurance industry now recognize that with value in their pricing?’” Brandt said. “The whole purpose of this program is to turn the process on its head, where the community with this new data is in control of their insurability as opposed to hoping the industry responds to what they’re doing.”

More Context

• Climate reckoning: Mass. communities stare down the prospect – and complications – of a retreat from rising waters (March 2026)
• Mass. Insurer of last resort wrestles with thorny questions around affordability (January 2026)
• New state coastal resilience plan proposes voluntary buyout program (November 2025)