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Could an Earthquake Cause the Next Financial Crisis?
May 20, 2013 | read more ›

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May 15, 2013 | read more ›

Scenarios, Financial Networks and Systemically Important Financial Institutions
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Publications

The WRN produces academic publications, industry reports and presentations. Some of the outputs are accessible below and also classified and integrated into the Research and Impact sections. For further information on publications please contact the research programme leaders or authors.

Risk Management Institute’s Quarterly Credit Report

Date: May 09, 2013
Type: Article
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Economic Capital & ERM
Hub: Financial Stability & Insurance Regulation

Author(s): National University of Singapore Risk Management Institute

Field(s): Operational Risk

Summary: The Quarterly Credit Report (QCR) is an analysis of credit outlooks across regions, economies and sectors. This analysis incorporates probabilities of default (PD) generated by the Risk Management Institute’s (RMI) default forecast model, a part of the RMI Credit Research Initiative at the National University of Singapore (NUS). The objective of the QCR is to provide insights on trends in credit outlooks to credit professionals, investors and researchers.

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A MapReduce Framework for Analysing Portfolios of Catastrophic Risk with Secondary Uncertainty

Date: Apr 22, 2013
Type: Paper
Pillar: Core Technologies & Methods
Hub: Technologies and Platforms
Attachment: Download File ›

Author(s): A. Rau-Chaplin, B. Varghese, Z. Yao

Field(s): MapReduce model, secondary uncertainty, risk modelling, aggregate risk analysis

Summary: The design and implementation of an extensible framework for performing exploratory analysis of complex property portfolios of catastrophe insurance treaties on the Map-Reduce model is presented in this paper. The framework implements Aggregate Risk Analysis, a Monte Carlo simulation technique, which is at the heart of the analytical pipeline of the modern quantitative insurance/reinsurance pipeline.

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A first analysis of the potential landslide distribution from the Iran earthquake

Date: Apr 18, 2013
Type: Article
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Other Perils

Author(s): Rob Parker and Dave Petley

Field(s): Landslide

Summary: The Mw = 7.8 earthquake in early April in Iran was the largest event in that country for about 50 years. Fortunately, the depth of the earthquake (82 km) and the low population density in the affected areas meant that loss of life was low for an event of this size

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Recent intense hurricane response to global climate change

Date: Mar 19, 2013
Type: Paper
Journal: Climate Dynamics
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Tropical Cyclones

Author(s): Greg Holland, Cindy L. Bruyère

Summary: Recent community consensus has concluded that it is likely that the frequency of intense hurricanes will increase with future anthropogenic climate change. IPCC (2007) also concluded that the current ‘warming of the climate system is unequivocal’. Yet IPCC (2012) concluded that ‘There is low confidence in any observed long-term increases in tropical cyclone activity’, based largely on potential errors in the observed data. Here we investigate this apparent anomaly and find that there has been an increase in the proportion of intense hurricanes relative to all hurricanes, and that is strongly related to an Anthropogenic Climate Change Index (ACCI).

On the sampling distribution of Allan factor estimator for a homogeneous Poisson process and its use to test inhomogeneities at multiple scales

Date: Mar 01, 2013
Type: Paper
Journal: Physica A
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Flood

Author(s): Francesco Serinaldi, Chris G. Kilsby

Summary: The Allan factor (AF) is a statistic widely used to assess if the rate of occurrences of an event tends to cluster and show persistence in a range of space and/or time scales. This study investigates the sampling distribution function of the AF estimator when the underlying process is homogeneous Poissonian.

Characterizing a Building Class via Key Features and Index Buildings for Class-Level Vulnerability Functions

Date: Feb 18, 2013
Type: Article
Conf: International Conference on Structural Safety & Reliability (ICOSSAR)
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Exposure, Vulnerability & Physical Impacts
Attachment: Download File ›

Author(s): K. Porter, I.H. Cho

Field(s): Vulnerability

Summary: The abstract summarizes a procedure for creating an analytically derived seismic vulnerability function using 2nd-generation performance-based earthquake engineering at practical cost, with mathematical rigor, reflecting all of the most-important variability within the class.

Post-Sandy: Recovering, Repairing and Rebuilding

Date: Jan 29, 2013
Type: Paper
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Tropical Cyclones

Author(s): IBHS

Summary: Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS), a WRN partner released three new papers focusing on building codes in New York and New Jersey; guidance for repairing and rebuilding residential and commercial structures post-Sandy; and business protection lessons learned from Sandy. These papers contain valuable information related to building codes in New York and New Jersey and highlights the importance of building mitigation measures to wind and flood.

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Global Risks 2013 - Eighth Edition

Date: Jan 08, 2013
Type: Paper
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Economic Capital & ERM
Hub: Systemic Risk

Author(s): Lee Howell, World Economic Forum, Editor in Chief

Summary: The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2013 report is developed from an annual survey of over 1,000 experts from industry, government, academia and civil society who were asked to review a landscape of 50 global risks.

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Damaging Earthquakes Database 2012 – The Year in Review

Date: Jan 04, 2013
Type: Article
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Earthquake

Author(s): James Daniell and Armand Vervaeck

Summary: The purpose of this report is to present the damaging earthquakes in the year 2012 around the world that were entered into the CATDAT Damaging Earthquake Database (a historical global catastrophe database compiled by our WRN partners CEDIM and KIT amongst others) in terms of their socio‐economic effects.

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WRN Bulletin: Hurricane Sandy Damage Survey Report

Date: Dec 10, 2012
Type: Paper
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Tropical Cyclones
Attachment: Download File ›

Author(s): Dr. Habil. Michael Kunz & Prasad Gunturi

Summary: Sandy was a storm system with special meteorological characteristics causing widespread damage from the Caribbean to the U.S. East Coast. At the U.S. coast, especially in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Sandy resulted in a relatively high death toll compared to historic events. Critical infrastructure failures (electricity, transportation) are expected to lead to a high amount of indirect damages.

Hurricane Sandy’s Storm Surge and the National Flood Insurance Program

Date: Nov 30, 2012
Type: Article
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Flood
Attachment: Download File ›

Author(s): Erwann Michel-Kerjan & Carolyn Kousky

Summary: Flood Insurance Coverage in New York and New Jersey

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CEDIM FDA-Report on Hurricane Sandy Sandy 22-30 October

Date: Nov 08, 2012
Type: Paper
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Tropical Cyclones
Attachment: Download File ›

Author(s): Chris Kilsby and Jim Hall. Bernhard Mühr. Michael Kunz, Tina Kunz -Plapp, James Daniell, Bijan Khazai, Marjorie Vannieuwenhuyse, Tina Comes, Florian Elmer, Kai Schröter, Adrian Leyser, Christian Lucas, Joachim Fohringer, Thomas Münzberg, Werner Trieselmann, Jochen Zschau

Summary: Hurricane Sandy was a storm system with special meteorlogical characteristics. It caused widespread damage from the Caribbean to the U.S. East Coast.

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Cultivating C4 crops in a changing climate: sugarcane in Ghana

Date: Nov 02, 2012
Type: Paper
Journal: Environmental Research Letters
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Natural Disasters & Climate Adapation

Author(s): Emily Black, Pier Luigi Vidale, Anne Verhoef,Santiago Vianna Cuadra, Tom Osborne and Catherine Van den Hoof

Summary: As fossil fuel prices increase, energy crops will become an increasingly lucrative option for farmers. Exploring the long-term environmental consequences of such cultivation is therefore a high priority. This paper applies a process-based crop model to sugarcane in Ghana (where cultivation is planned), and the São Paulo region of Brazil (which has a well-established sugarcane industry) to understand the impact this could have in areas of vulnerable water resource and long term environmental sustainability

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Assessing Tropical Cyclone Damage

Date: Nov 01, 2012
Type: Article
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Tropical Cyclones
Attachment: Download File ›

Author(s): James Done, Jeffrey Czajkowski

Field(s): Atmospheric

Summary: This study provides new insights into the drivers of hurricane losses that have implications for existing approaches to hurricane loss modeling.

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Impact of North Atlantic Oscillation on European Windstorms

Date: Oct 31, 2012
Type: Paper
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Tropical Cyclones
Attachment: Download File ›

Author(s): Prof David B. Stephenson; Dr. Leon Hermanson; Dr Angelika Werner

Summary: A two page paper looking at the impact of North Atlantic Oscillation on European Windstorms

Trimming the UCERF2 Hazard Logic Tree

Date: Oct 10, 2012
Type: Paper
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Earthquake
Attachment: Download File ›

Author(s): Keith A. Porter, Edward H. Field, and Kevin Milner

Field(s): Earthquake

Summary: Exposures with very large sums insured, such as those dealt through Facultative reinsurance, require particular studies when assessing their seismic risk. A more accurate risk assessment may be translated in better reinsurance pricing due to the consideration of a wider range of uncertainties. A thorough hazard analysis requires a Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA) which in some cases may be computationally demanding and time consuming to set up.

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Wharton Flood Report Briefing

Date: Oct 04, 2012
Type: Article
Pillar: Natural Hazard & Risk
Hub: Flood
Attachment: Download File ›

Author(s): Jeffrey Czajkowski & Vaughn Jensen

Summary: Assessing the Feasibility of U.S. Private Market Flood Insurance - a study by WRN partner Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center.

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Rapid Post-Event Catastrophe Modelling and Visualization

Date: Oct 01, 2012
Type: Paper
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Core Technologies & Methods
Hub: Technologies and Platforms

Author(s): Eric Mason, Andrew Rau-Chaplin, Kunal Shridhar, Blesson Varghese2 and Naman Varshne

Field(s): post-event earthquake analysis; catastrophe modelling; loss estimation; loss visualization

Summary: Catastrophe models capable of rapid data ingestion, loss estimation and visualization are required for postevent analysis of catastrophic events such as earthquakes. This paper describes the design and development of the Automated Post-Event Earthquake Loss Estimation and Visualization (APE-ELEV) system for real-time estimation and visualization of losses incurred due to earthquakes. A model for estimating expected losses due to earthquakes in near realtime is described and implemented. Since immediately postevent data is often available from multiple disparate sources, a geo-browser is described that helps users to visualize and integrate hazard, exposure and loss data.

Parallel Simulations for Analysing Portfolios of Catastrophic Event Risk

Date: Oct 01, 2012
Type: Paper
Conf: International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Core Technologies & Methods
Hub: Technologies and Platforms

Author(s): A. K. Bahl, O. Baltzer, A. Rau-Chaplin and B. Varghese

Summary: At the heart of the analytical pipeline of a modern quantitative insurance/reinsurance company is a stochastic simulation technique for portfolio risk analysis and pricing process referred to as Aggregate Analysis. This paper explores parallel methods for aggregate risk analysis risk analysis.

Likelihood inference for Archimedean copulas in high dimensions under known margins

Date: Sep 28, 2012
Type: Article
Journal: Journal of Multivariate Analysis - Special Issue on Copula Modeling and Dependence
Ext. Link: Click Here ›
Pillar: Core Technologies & Methods

Author(s): Marius Hofert, Martin Mächler, Alexander J. McNeil

Summary: This paper gives theoretical insight about how to compute complicated densities in high dimensions (required for estimation)

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About WRN

As economic, social and environmental uncertainties increase, institutions and populations seek greater resilience to support sustainable growth. Science and insurance lay at the heart of understanding, managing and sharing these risks, building more secure futures at local and global scales.

The Willis Research Network (WRN) operates across the full spectrum of risk from natural catastrophe, to legal liability, financial and security issues linked across driving themes: Resilience, Security & Sustainable Growth; Managing Extremes; Insurance & Risk Management and Mastering the Modelled World.

All Members and activities are united by a common aim: improving resilience by integrating first class science into operational and financial decision-making across public and private institutions.

Latest News

Could an Earthquake Cause the Next Financial Crisis?
May 20, 2013 | read more ›

Willis Research Network – Natural Hazards Client Seminar
May 15, 2013 | read more ›

Scenarios, Financial Networks and Systemically Important Financial Institutions
May 01, 2013 | read more ›

Willis ‘Resilience’ Magazine Identifies Growing Risk Challenges from Natural Catastrophe Exposures
Apr 24, 2013 | read more ›

Big Data: Is it all just Big Jargon?
Apr 23, 2013 | read more ›

Newsletter

Fast Facts

  • The WRN was formed in September 2006 to support leading academic research into extreme events, with a specific focus on responding to the challenges faced by businesses, insurers and governments
  • The WRN's membership spans the globe, counting more than 50 world-class universities, scientific research organisations and public policy institutions
  • Collectively, our members have published more than 100 papers in leading scientific journals
  • Nearly all of the WRN's research is freely available to the public and can be downloaded on our website

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