Willis, one of the world’s largest insurance brokers, has developed a unique risk management solution for company boards, CFOs and corporate risk managers. Atlas is a platform that assists clients to assess disaster risks across their asset base to limit their exposure to direct losses or business interruption. It gathers and interprets a range of open source and proprietary datasets, which are blended with a client’s own risk information, to deliver deep insights into a company’s risk profile around the world. In the development of Atlas, Willis worked closely with UNISDR and used information produced for the GAR by UNEP/GRID-Geneva from 2007 to 2011.

By using Atlas as part of their regular workflow, corporate risk managers can visualise how a range of risks can adversely affect their property and asset portfolios. The UNISDR data are used in Atlas to score each site location against a catastrophe risk index. The risk manager is also able to visually explore the sites and each global hazard within the Atlas map to quickly illustrate how, why and where the company is exposed, thereby enabling the identification of risk hotspots.

Atlas empowers risk managers to take proactive control of the risks they face. It highlights strengths, weaknesses and where improvements need to be made in a company’s risk management programme. This helps a risk manager prioritise investments in risk reduction and improves business resilience and performance. At the same time, increased risk visibility and an enhanced risk management programme enables brokers, such as Willis, to secure more competitive insurance premiums from the commercial market.

The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) was launched in 2006 and has since brought together an extensive community of earthquake scientists, social scientists, including economists, as well as IT specialists, in consultation with the private sector and governments. Together they are developing a global model of earthquake hazard, exposure, vulnerability and risk, as well as tools and resources to use the model and its outputs. GEM is a nonprofit initiative, driven by a PPP whose mission is to “raise risk awareness and promote preparedness” on earthquake risk.

The project is continuously evolving, and the outcome will include exposure databases containing information on socio-economic characteristics as well as physical features such as building types; an extensive catalogue of past earthquakes; and tools for characterising earthquake hazard, including modelling global stress, subduction zones and active faults, ground motion, etc. As these products become available through an open source and dynamic platform, they will be constantly updated as the science evolves and new data are collected. The GEM project further aims to develop and promote standards that will enable improved data and knowledge exchange.