Share

On May 19th, GEM Secretary General, John Schneider, participated in the Willis Research Network conference - Celebrating 15 years of Science for Resilience - presenting GEM’s experience in harnessing knowledge from global and local research communities in Session 2: Standard for global modelling with local impact.

Over three days, more than 450 delegates attended nine sessions showcasing WRN’s research partnerships, insights on how science has improved understanding of risk over the last 15 years, and discussions on how collaboration between science and business can further foster resilience for organizations and society as a whole.

John also joined the Session 2 panel discussion moderated by Matt Foote, Director, Climate and Resilience Hub Willis Towers Watson, where panelists outlined several global public-private modelling initiatives and their application across different stakeholder communities,, and in particular how these can be applied to support global, regional, and local risk assessment and risk reduction strategies.

John shared his thoughts on how the next generation of models should be provided and delivered saying, “Global models have focused typically on individual hazards so obviously integration into a cohesive or harmonized model is needed. At GEM, we're assessing the risk more holistically and in a more integrated fashion, which we believe is critical in understanding risk.”

He also pointed out that openness of not only the platforms but the models themselves and all of the assumptions that go into them is important to make data - and in turn the models - more transparent and accessible.

Although John expressed that there’s still a lot of room for improvements in sharing vulnerability and exposure information between and among private or commercial entities, he cited that GEM is starting to see this open up more and models are becoming more transparent. He attributes this in part to GEM’s efforts in bringing together public, private and academic institutions with substantially different motivations coming together to build models, tools and databases, and sharing them.

The next challenges in modelling, John summarized, would be in organizations going beyond primarily sharing hazard data and models to sharing vulnerability and exposure data for risk models; and moving from disaggregated sets of mostly closed risk models to global collaborations with open models and tools for multi-hazard risk assessment.

To download or watch all the plenary sessions, presentations and discussions, including on-demand videos for a more in-depth look into some of WRN partnerships and business applications and articles, visit https://www.willistowerswatson.com/en-GB/Insights/campaigns/15-years-of-science-for-resilience.