It's not now or never: Implications of investment timing and risk aversion on climate adaptation to extreme events.

•We propose a new modeling framework for evaluating climate change adaptation investments.•We analyze investment timing for risk reduction projects, accounting for market risk preferences.•Optimal timing has important impacts on the NPV of projects, especially when investment cost is high.•Assuming risk neutrality when the market is risk averse results in unnecessary investment delay.•More serious climate change, results in higher investment values and earlier investment.