Research is a slog. Teams of analysts sit at their desks, fingers typing furiously, windows and tabs opening and closing. At least, in the pre-pandemic days, they had each other.

Though it’s still unclear how many will work remotely indefinitely by choice, firms are grappling with the possibility that they could be forced out of their offices again—perhaps by another pandemic wave, or through displacement due to climate change-related events, which are ramping up in frequency and intensity