Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Natural hazards represent a significant risk to the people and economy of every country in the world, and are most often a future liability that is difficult to quantify or predict. While societies make significant efforts to protect themselves from disasters, recent data suggests that their impacts have been rising. The insurance industry estimates that insured catastrophic losses average $60 billion (USD) per year and, along with total losses, have increased steadily since 1980 (Munich Re, NatCatSERVICE). The total number of natural catastrophes shows a similar increase that is largely due to an increase in hydrometeorological and climatological events. This research program aims to better characterize and weight the exposure associated with three natural hazards - earthquake, flood and wind - for Canada and around the globe. The specific objective is to define a common framework and currency that allows for the assessment and comparison of natural catastrophic risk across different hazards and provide pragmatic means that fills gaps in current risk management processes of the insurance industry. We will leverage experience and data from the insurance industry and from available public science and insurance industry data to find pragmatic means to calculate and compare risk across disciplines and fill gaps in the risk management framework for government science and the publicly traded (re)insurance companies. The benefits of the proposed research will include new ways to quantify risk for the insurance industry for both Canada and around the world in order to better understand, mitigate and hedge exposure of urban and suburban areas to natural catastrophes. This project provides a platform for PPA (Public, Private and Academic) collaboration on risk research, risk knowledge exchange and model development.