It's all in the tail.....

The purpose of the WRN is to gain a better understanding of extremes and their distribution through time and space.

We are interested in extremes of frequency and severity. Much of our work is focused on answering basic questions of populations and porfolios, for example: what is the maximum probable loss that can be expected in one in 250 years; where is the risk located; and what loss scenarios are of greatest concern? Often the greatest challenge is not estimating individual extremes, but the conspiracy of multiple seemingly independent events.

Working on extremes requires a corresponding grasp of uncertainty. Explicitly focusing on uncertainty through its identification, evaluation and treatment is a key theme that percolates throughout the entire WRN programme. Incorporating uncertainty boundaries within extreme risk analysis, effectively communicating these confidences to audiences and actively employing them in sophisticated commercial and policy decision-making is the key to successful catastrophe risk and financial management.

The initial focus of the Network has been on natural catastrophe risk from atmospheric and seismic drivers and their related hazards of windstorm, flood, storm surge, hail, landslide, wildfire, earthquake, tsunami and others. We also examine the impact of selected man-made events such as terrorism and conflagration. These forces have an impact on the built environment and human systems and this leads us to focus on areas of exposure, vulnerability, engineering, business interruption and demand surge in post-event circumstances.

Much of our work is mediated via models and modelling. Spatial location and referencing is the pivot on which much of our analysis turns. Consequently we have a very strong programme on geospatial science and visualisation including a strong focus on the role of current and emerging remote sensing facilities to improve catastrophe risk assessment and post-event analysis. Building on the resources of Willis the WRN is now extending its work to further areas of actuarial and financial risk modelling in response to regulatory interest in risk-based modelling of extremes. These including credit and default risk, operational risk and legal liability exposures.

The overall programme is co-ordinated by Matthew Foote, Research Director, WRN. Summary details of specific work can be found in the following sub-sections.