Catastrophe Risk Management for Natural and Man-Made Perils

Natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and extreme weather pose catastrophe risks to society, commerce, the insurance industry and national governments. The threat is compounded by man-made risks of terrorism, industrial accidents and large scale utility failures.

Understanding the hazards and improving the science of risk mitigation is key for many catastrophe-prone parts of the world, particularly in countries with the potential for high mortality from natural disasters.

The financial services industries, and other public and private sectors, make increasing use of catastrophe risk analysis to supplement risk management decisions. Quantitative models are used to allocate risk capital, manage portfolio accumulations, assess the benefits of diversification, determine risk transfer needs and quantify the costs of risk.

This programme is focused on advancing the science and techniques of the next generation of catastrophe risk models, and seeks to broaden the applications of catastrophe risk analysis for government policy, planning and strategy development.

Key Research Areas

The Information Age is making data more readily available, in real-time, and in large volumes: techniques for assimilating, sifting and using information in the volumes and detail that is now available can improve hazard assessment, early warning signals, vulnerability information, and exposure data.
The computer and analytical environment is changing, with increasing processing power providing the ability to explore a much larger domain of potential futures and complexity of systems and interaction.
New mathematical techniques provide the potential to extend the understanding of the complexity, uncertainty and correlation space of catastrophe risk.
Exploration and the communication of uncertainty in the components and output of models, ranging from making uncertainty more explicit, to the exploration of uncertain decision-making.
Advances in the science and understanding of specific perils (earth sciences, meteorology, hydrology), vulnerability of physical infrastructure and the built environment (engineering, architecture and urban planning) and social and demographic changes in the populations affected.

Other Participation

The programme is coordinated with other activities and centres in the University, including: