The Willis Research Network (WRN) supports open academic research and the development of new risk models and applications. Our ethos is to provide an open forum for the advacement of the science of extreme events through close collaboration between universities, insurers, reinsurers, catastrophe modelling companies, government research institutions and non-governmental organisations.

The WRN’s research programme is primarily focussed on the key issues related to climate and weather risks, including storms, floods and other extremes. The outputs of our research are designed to help businesses, insurers, governments, and public policy institutions identify and quantify their exposure to extreme events, and assist in the risk management decision-making process. Our focus can be loosely structured around the following key research areas:

 

• Technological – developing innovative methods to improve the measurement, modelling, estimation and communication of risk.
• Theoretical – understanding the natural and anthropogenic factors that define global insurance risk.
• Social and economic – defining the interrelationships between public policy, global economic cycles, local impacts on communities and organisations.

Cutting across these are considerations of non-specific climactic hazards, including uncertainty; risk awareness; appetite and perception; risk transfer optimisation; and data fusion. In all cases, the ultimate aim of the WRN is to harness and promote academic research in the international insurance and financial services arena, and develop world leading centres of expertise through the complementary association of research groups, commercial organisations and academics.

The WRN is a subsidiary of Willis Group, the global insurance and reinsurance broker. When catastrophes occur, Willis aims to ensure that sufficient funds are available to pay the millions of insurance claims from homeowners, businesses and public sector organisations to help those affected rebuild lives and infrastructure. Sometimes we support government natural catastrophe schemes that protect national populations: Turkey, Taiwan, Algeria, and Romania are four examples.In fact Willis arranges protection for around US$5 trillion of exposed risk every year.

The company employs around 20,000 people worldwide and many of them help evaluate risk and analyse ways of sharing it at local and global levels. Our team includes meteorologists, seismologists, hydrologists, engineers, actuaries, statisticians and many other specialists.

Collaborating closely with clients, understanding their business and the challenges they face is core to the work of the WRN. This applies from both an internal risk management and a regulatory view point. By investing in long-term, breakthrough scientific research and advanced technologies, and creating synergies between industry and academia, the WRN is able to tackle these challenges and prepare for future risks.

The WRN Research Management Team

Rowan Douglas, Chairman, Willis Research Network & CEO Global Analytics, Willis Re

A board member of Willis Re, Rowan leads the company's analytics team and resources to support risk modelling, risk management and reinsurance transactions. He is also Chairman of the WRN, overseeing all academic and industry research. In 2008 Rowan was appointed by the UK Science Minister to Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the public body which oversees public environmental science expenditure. He also sits on the Governing Board of the Global Earthquake Model Foundation, Pavia, Italy and the Advisory Committee of the US National Centre of Atmospheric Research Earth System Laboratory, Boulder, USA. Rowan began his career underwriting reinsurance at Syndicate 1095 at Lloyd's before founding the international risk information company WIRE Ltd in 1994 which he sold to Willis in 2000. He was educated in geography with degrees from Durham and Bristol universities.

Matthew Foote, Research Director, Willis Research Network

Based in London, Matthew has overall responsibility for the WRN's international research programme and, with support from the WRN thematic coordinators, directs each of the core research streams being tackled by WRN's academic and commercial partners, including natural hazards and risk, financial risk and regulatory issues, catastrophe modeling, high performance computation and exposure and vulnerability modelling. In addition, Matthew works to develop links with UK and international research funding organisations and WRN partners. Matthew joined Willis in 1999 as the primary catastrophe modeller for Willis’s UK insurance clients and a principal consultant with Willis’ R&D consultancy, Cordis Consulting. During this time, Matthew worked on numerous model development projects, including UK storm surge and Thames river flood and Japanese earthquake. He was also responsible for the development of an earthquake catastrophe model for the Turkish Government.

 

Matthew worked for six years as senior geographical information specialist at Intermediary Systems Limited and EQECAT, responsible for developing catastrophe model databases and pricing and underwriting models for UK primary insurers. Before this he spent ten years in government service as a Geographical Information Systems analyst, cartographer and satellite imaging specialist.

 

As well as qualifications in cartography and surveying, Matthew has a First Class degree (BSc) in Geography from the University of London, is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Chartered Geographer, and an affiliate member of the Natural Environment Research Council Peer Review Panel. He is a topic author on the Birkbeck, University of London Masters programme in geographic information science, where he is also completing a part time PhD in the application of close range videometric measurement to coastal geomorphology, with numerous publications in this area.

 

Brian Owens, Executive Director

Brian Owens is an Executive Director in Willis Analytics' London office and research coordinator for the atmospheric, climate and meteorological research being undertaken throughout the WRN . His role involves overseeing the client catastrophe modeling work for Asia, Middle East and Turkey. One of Brian's key objectives is to ensure that the research programme is being followed and that ultimately the goals set out to deliver research that can be used in an operational environment are met. Many of the universities and institutions in the WRN co-author and jointly publish their work.  The universities involved in the atmospheric stream plan to publish about seven papers relating to tropical cyclone and extreme statistics analysis over the coming 12 – 15 months (see Research section of website for more details).

Dr Alexandros Ntelekos, Senior Catastrophe Risk Analyst

 

Dr Alexandros Ntelekos joined Willis in August 2008 as a Senior Catastrophe Risk Analyst, following the completion of his PhD in Hydro-Meterology from Princeton University, a WRN member. Dr Alexandros is the primary catastrophe risk analyst for France, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. He also serves as the Research Leader of the flood group of the WRN and is also a resident expert in windstorm and flooding. The research overseen by Dr Ntelekos aims to improve our understanding of urban flood risks through the use of sophisticated hydraulic modelling techniques and high resolution terrain data sets. The work being carried out by our academic partners at Bristol University in particular will help advance our understanding of urban flood risks and develop efficient numerical techniques that improve the representation of the urban environment within catastrophe models (see The WRN 60-Second Interview on this page & News section).

 

Dr Iman Karimi, Divisional Director & Senior Catastrophe Risk Analyst

 

Dr Karimi looks after catastrophe modelling for the German-speaking territories and Turkey. In addition, he is one of the company's key earthquake risk experts and the research coordinator of both proprietary earthquake model development and overarching issues dealing with uncertainty within in the WRN. Dr Karimi is co-ordinating the new generation of hybrid earthquake models for Tunisia that will act as a blueprint for further hybrid earthquake models. The universities and organisations involved in this research include Imperial College London, Cambridge University, Cambridge Architectural Research, Kyoto University, Bocazici University and Cedim. Dr Karimi is also the key point of contact for the WRN's involvement in the Global Earthquake Model, a non-profit initiative backed by key public and private sector sponsors, including the WRN, which has invested roughly €1million in the project. GEM’s goal is to provide a uniform, independent standard to calculate and communicate earthquake risk worldwide. Some 500,000 people have died in the last decade due to earthquakes and tsunamis, most of these in the developing world, where the risk is increasing due to rapid population growth and urbanisation.

 

Dr Rashmin Gunasekera, Primary Analyst Middle East & North Africa Region

 

Dr Gunasekera is a seismologist and catastrophe risk analyst for the Analytics and Solutions division of Willis Re and the coordinator of the Exposure, Vulnerability and Geo-visualisation stream of the WRN. He is responsible for catastrophe management services for Middle East and North Africa, post disaster event response, and national government insurance schemes. Prior to joining Willis, he was a Research Scientist for an European Union (EU) funded project on assessing risk and decision support for EU Populations Threatened by Volcanoes (EXPLORIS). Dr Gunasekera led an expert panel on the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland during the last month's European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna. He is currently overseeing the WRN's volcanic research and investigating how a catastrophe model for volcanic hazards could benefit the insurance sector. Dr Gunasekera recently published a paper on Insurance Risks from Volcanic Eruptions in Europe that identified the 10 most dangerous volcanoes in the region. Combined, the volcanoes could pose a threat to two million people with an aggregated exposed property value of $85 billion (see Research section of website).