IDF and Willis part of task force behind open-source data platform on resilience metrics

A multi-partner task force including the Insurance Development Forum,  Willis Towers Watson and the Oasis Modelling Framework has launched a global data initiative for open-source tracking, sharing and modelling of unified resilience metrics from across the globe.

The Global Resilience Index Initiative (GRII) will be the world’s first curated, open-source reference index. It has been established specifically to create a globally consistent model for the assessment of resilience across all sectors and geographies offering high level metrics across the built environment, infrastructure, agriculture and societal exposures with many potential applications in aggregated risk management worldwide.

"To resolve the climate emergency, we must also tackle a data emergency," Dr Nicola Ranger from the University of Oxford said in an opening statement.

The project was spearheaded by UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney who challenged the industry to put up the open-source data to make resilience to and the challenges stemming from climate change, easier to document and understand for stakeholders across the globe.

"We have been creating a human environment that is going to be unable to cope with the risks we are facing," Rowan Douglas (pictured) of Willis Towers Watson said at the index launch during COP26 on Monday, November 8.

"They are invisible ... invisible to our governments, to our financial system and largely invisible to our legal system."

To date, the available data has not been fully coherent and comparable even for the highest-level participants, not to mention developing world policy makers. Data in the programme should now match insurance risk modelling principles.

"This is the beginning of the retraining of the invisible hand to guide a prosperous but resilient future," Douglas said. Investment in unified data comes on faith that "obscure technicalities in modelling of finance and physics...can be the magic cure to this global challenge."

Metrics will run across the built environment, infrastructure, agriculture and societal exposures "with many potential applications in aggregated risk management worldwide," the UK Centre for Greening Finance & Investment CGFI said in its press statement on the launch.

Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, stated: “It is imperative that it is clear which financial flows and investments are Paris aligned. Without this, we will not achieve the net zero transition needed for 1.5 degrees. Discipline and transparency over alignment will also play a critical role for climate resilient development. GRII can play an important role by creating a shared understanding of mounting physical climate risks. In turn, this will help close the insurance protection gap and direct investment and aid to where they are needed the most.”

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