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.