JBA broadens access to Sri Lanka flood model via Simplitium’s ModEx platform

Flood risk modeller JBA Risk Management has released its Sri Lanka flood model on Simplitium’s ModEx platform. The initiative aims to broaden accessibility to the Sri Lanka model for both the insurers and the wider Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) community.

JBA has collaborated with the Insurance Development Forum (IDF) on modelling the Sri Lanka National Natural Disaster Insurance Scheme (NNDIS) – a state-funded scheme providing protection for low income Sri Lanka households backed by the international reinsurance market.

“This marks a significant milestone in what has been a very fruitful collaboration between the IDF and JBA," said Iain Willis, managing director, Asia-Pacific, at JBA. "Launching the Sri Lanka flood model on ModEx provides a wider platform for the reinsurance market to access this model, ultimately helping build greater flood resilience in Sri Lanka.”

The model has been converted to an open ‘Oasis’ format and updated to include new vulnerability functions, specific to the low-income houses and microenterprises covered under the National Natural Disaster Insurance Scheme (NNDIS) scheme in Sri Lanka.

Ian Branagan, chief risk officer at RenaissanceRe, and co-chair of the IDF Risk Modelling Steering Group, said: “As part of our support of the IDF, RenaissanceRe is proud to fund development of JBA's Sri Lanka flood model, its application to the Sri Lankan NNDIS, and its conversion to an open source format on the Oasis platform.

“One of our founding tenets is improving the understanding of natural hazard risk through robust catastrophe models. We hope our efforts to improve analysis of risks like Sri Lankan floods will help to enhance disaster risk financing and community resilience in low and middle-income countries while lowering barriers to high-quality hazard and risk information.”

Branagan added that supporting the development of open source models can enable improvements in local modelling capabilities: “It encourages greater ownership of the understanding and management of disaster risk by government agencies, thereby fostering efforts to reduce the natural disaster protection gap.”

The Sri Lanka flood model is available on Simplitium’s ModEx platform as well as JBA’s catastrophe modelling platform, JCalf and Oasis.

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