RMS partners with the UNISDR and the World Bank to advance global catastrophe resilience

Press release:

Governments and policy-makers to leverage RMS technology to strengthen risk management decision-making and support disaster risk reduction strategies

Newark, Calif. – RMS, the world’s leading catastrophe risk management firm, today announced that governments will have free access to RMS(one)®, the company’s real-time exposure and risk management platform, to directly access catastrophe models from both public and private sector organizations. The free access to RMS(one) is a key component of a new partnership between RMS and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and a collaboration with The World Bank.

The public-private partnerships with the UNISDR and The World Bank are part of a new RMS initiative to expand access to catastrophe models to governments in developing and developed countries. The objective is to strengthen the understanding of catastrophe risk and empower governments to make more informed decisions about risk finance and mitigation.

By running models on RMS(one), governments gain much greater value from the investments they are increasingly making in catastrophe models. Government decision-makers, who do not currently have direct access to the models and typically rely solely on static reports, will be empowered to use the models to dynamically analyze risk, track risk over time, and optimize risk mitigation policy decisions.

The UNISDR’s new global, multi-peril, probabilistic risk model will be freely available to all public and private sector users of RMS(one) to use for risk assessment of major natural hazards in every country, worldwide. It will be released in March 2015 at the 3rd World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction.

The World Bank is supporting a partnership between RMS and catastrophe-risk specialists ERN to implement the Comprehensive Approach to Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA) framework on RMS(one). The framework, which ERN will implement on RMS(one) at no cost, will enable governments and the risk community to access all CAPRA-based models on the platform. The perils covered by the CAPRA models include earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, landslides and volcanoes.

ERN, an existing RMS partner that is already implementing its commercial suite of models on RMS(one), developed CAPRA with funding from the World Bank-managed Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR).

QUOTES

Andrew Maskrey, coordinator of the UNISDR’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction: “The availability of the UNISDR global model on RMS(one) will facilitate its dissemination and interactive use by a broad group of users in both the public and private sectors. Availability of our model on RMS(one) will greatly increase its relevance towards achieving the broader objective of risk sensitive public and private sector investment, in particular in low and lower-middle income countries and regions where commercial catastrophe models are not currently available.”

Francis Ghesquiere, Head of Secretariat, GFDRR and Manager, Disaster Risk Management Practice Group, World Bank: “We welcome the RMS initiative to offer free access for modelers and governments to their new risk management platform. This collaboration supports our goal to stimulate and encourage the development and expanded use of catastrophe models to support disaster risk reduction and new risk-sharing arrangements in developing countries.”

Dr. Robert Muir-Wood, chief research officer, RMS: “RMS has long had the aspiration to expand the application of catastrophe risk modeling to the developing world. This initiative will be influential in delivering this information where it’s most needed.”

Paul VanderMarck, chief products officer, RMS: “RMS is leveraging the scalability of the RMS(one) platform and the RMS Cloud to enable governments to benefit from many of the same catastrophe risk modeling capabilities used widely by the insurance industry to quantify and manage catastrophe risk. Modeling companies are already implementing more than 300 catastrophe models on the RMS(one) platform for use in the insurance industry, and that’s just the start. Now we’re inviting the broader global community of risk modelers that is supporting public sector disaster risk reduction work to also take advantage of RMS(one).”

NOTES TO EDITORS

The UNISDR multi-peril risk model was developed in collaboration with The Center for Numerical Models in Engineering (CIMNE) and its associates, the Centre for Research in Environmental Monitoring (CIMA Foundation), United Nations Environment Program GRID (UNEP), Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), Geo Science Australia, European Commission Joint Research Centre, Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry lands (ACSAD) Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET), and World Agency of Planetary Monitoring and Earthquake Risk Reduction (WAPMERR).

CAPRA provides a simple framework to aid the development and implementation of catastrophe models in developing countries to promote disaster risk understanding and preparedness at a local, national and regional level.

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RMS models and software help financial institutions and public agencies evaluate and manage catastrophe risks throughout the world, promoting resilient societies and a sustainable global economy. Learn more at www.rms.com and follow us @RMS.