The overarching goal of the Oasis Innovation Hub for Catastrophe and Climate Extremes Risk Assessment Project (H2020_Insurance) was to support the understanding of climate risks by the (re-) insurance sector and society in general. This helped reduce the gap between insured and uninsured losses caused by climatic hazards. By creating an understanding of associated risks and increasing the uptake of insurance to cover new sectors and regions, with a focus on critical infrastructure, health, natural resources and supply chains greater financial resilience can be created. It also enables societies to recover from extreme climatic events.
The project operationalised a risk calculation software, called the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework. This framework enables the integration of multiple data sources including environmental hazard, vulnerability and damage data, combined with financial information to provide a risk assessment of potential loss and damage from extreme climate and disaster events in a given area. This project sought to innovate a new open-source standard for risk assessment, to improve climate modelling, damage assessment techniques and the accuracy of the models. The project operated several demonstrator activities linked to ‘real’ situations. They were co-designed by the scientific community, the insurance sector, end-user communities, municipalities and businesses. The demonstrator activities were based on the hydro-climatic risk (in the Danube Region), typhoon risk in the West Pacific, forest risks in North America and Australia, and African farmer risk to support underwriting micro-insurance, climate-related health risks in Berlin and Potsdam, Germany. Results from these innovations were made available via the Oasis Hub, the eMarket for free and commercial environmental and risk data, tools and services.
Fresh Thoughts led the work on communication and on the project impact on the targeted sectors.