Calculating Catastrophe

Calculating Catastrophe has been written to explain, to a general readership, the underlying philosophical ideas and scientific principles that govern catastrophic events, both natural and man-made. Knowledge of the broad range of catastrophes deepens understanding of individual modes of disaster. This book will be of interest to anyone aspiring to understand catastrophes better, but will be of particular value to those engaged in public and corporate policy, and the financial markets.The author, Dr. Gordon Woo, was trained in mathematical physics at Cambridge, MIT and Harvard, and has made his career as a calculator of catastrophes. His diverse experience includes consulting for IAEA on the seismic safety of nuclear plants and for BP on offshore oil well drilling. As a catastrophist at Risk Management Solutions, he has advanced the insurance modelling of catastrophes, including designing a model for terrorism risk.

Watch a video interview with Gordon Woo Book Launch of Calculating Catastrophe Calculating Catastrophe has been written to explain, to a general readership, the underlying philosophical ideas and scientific principles that govern catastrophic events, both natural and man-made. Knowledge of the broad range of catastrophes deepens understanding of individual modes of disaster. This book will be of interest to anyone aspiring to understand catastrophes better, but will be of particular value to those engaged in public and corporate policy, and the financial markets. The author, Dr. Gordon Woo, was trained in mathematical physics at Cambridge, MIT and Harvard, and has made his career as a calculator of catastrophes. His diverse experience includes consulting for IAEA on the seismic safety of nuclear plants and for BP on offshore oil well drilling. As a catastrophist at Risk Management Solutions, he has advanced the insurance modelling of catastrophes, including designing a model for terrorism risk. Contents:Natural Hazards:Causation and AssociationExtra-Terrestrial HazardsMeteorological HazardsGeological HazardsGeomorphic HazardsHydrological HazardsSocietal Hazards:Political ViolenceInfectious Disease PandemicsIndustrial and Transportation AccidentsFraud CatastropheA Sense of Scale:Size Scales of Natural HazardsHazard Spatial ScalesThe Human Disaster TollModels of a Fractal WorldA Measure of Uncertainty:The Concept of ProbabilityThe Meaning of UncertaintyAleatory and Epistemic UncertaintyProbability AmbiguityThe Weighing of EvidenceA Matter of Time:Temporal Models of HazardsLong-Term Data RecordsStatistics of ExtremesCatastrophe Complexity:Emergent CatastrophesFinancial CrashesAncillary HazardsTerrorism:A Thinking Man's GameDefeating Terrorist NetworksCounter-RadicalizationForecasting:Earthquake ForecastingVerificationRiver Flows and Sea WavesAccelerating Approach to CriticalityEvidence-Based DiagnosisDisaster Warning:Decision in the BalanceEvacuationThe Wisdom of ExpertsDisaster Scenarios:Scenario SimulationFootprints and VulnerabilityFermi ProblemsCatastrophe Cover:Probable Maximum LossCoherent Risk MeasuresThe Samaritan's DilemmaCatastrophe Risk Securitization:Catastrophe BondsThe Price of InnovationRisk Horizons:Ecological CatastropheClimate ChangeWar and Conflict Resolution Readership: Applied mathematicians, earth and atmospheric scientists, civil engineers, geographers, economists and general public. Keywords:Catastrophe;Calculating;Mathematics;DisasterKey Features:Synoptic assessment of catastrophe events of all typesInter-comparison of different hazardsAttention to quantitative risk management issuesReviews:“Gordon Woo's book The Mathematics of Natural Catastrophes is a modern classic for anyone interested in risk analysis, securitization and emergency response. The publication of this timely update is very welcome, with a wider decision theoretic perspective being maintained throughout. This makes the book more accessible to and more timely for the people who need it most, those on the policy hot seats.”Prof Roger Cooke Chauncey Starr Chair for Risk Analysis Resources for the Future, Washington, DC “With his trademark gift for illustrating key concepts with colorful anecdotes, Dr. Woo has crafted a survey of catastrophe science that is both informative and a pleasure to read.”Prof George Zanjani AAMGA Distinguished Chair in Risk Management and Insurance Georgia State University “It is absolutely excellent and I am thoroughly enjoying it … I am recommending it to everyone I see.”Sir John Beddington Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government and Head of the Government Office for Science, UK “The book is very accessible — it can be read as light reading, focusing on the examples — or as a deeper introduction to the issues, the mathemtics of the phenomena, and the methodologies which exist for coping with them. It is certainly a book which kept me gripped to the end.”David J Hand Imperial College London, UK “It is absolutely crucial for our students.”Prof Christine Wamsler Lund University, Sweden “Woo has a specialist audience in mind, but running through Calculating Catastrophe is a lesson for novice and initiate alike. This concerns how and why modern societies have such difficulty dealing with the biggest questions they face, from climate change and terrorism to financial crisis. The author — whose business card for the modelling company RMS reads: 'Dr Gordon Woo, Catastrophist' — underlines time and again the uncertainty that always remains in managing risk.”Financial Times “Your excellent book will be a standard reference text in the coming years.”Prof Rohan Gunaratna Head, International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research Nanyang Technological University, Singapore “A fascinating survey of catastrophe science that covers a wide range of natural and man-made risks, in an attempt to provide broader knowledge and deeper understanding about the different risks involved. The author is defined to be 'a catastrophist with Risk Management Solutions', and this volume is an updated version of his earlier book The Mathematics of Natural Catastrophes. The book is full of challenging material that would benefit from being analysed in greater detail within strategic, and/or futures, tools and techniques in order to make its contents more managerially accessible.”Long Range Planning (LRP) “… this is a book for a broad audience about facts and principles. The erudition and literacy of the author are amazing and an intellectual pleasure to read.”The European Mathematical Society “Although the subject matter is dark, this is an optimistic book. Woo believes in the power of mathematics to explain the natural world and even to shine a little light into the darker corners of human affairs.”The Mathematical Intelligencer “Gordon Woo has written a very user-friendly book. He is careful with the unknown risks and uncertainties as well — the error bars.”The Observer

A collection of essays, fictions, and interviews exploring the weird temporalities of finance and catastrophe. Once, financial practitioners plied a hybrid trade as hydrologists, star-gazers, and weather-watchers who sought to discover the natural laws of value and exchange as they did the divine order of an unchanging nature. Today, corporate firms hire trend forecasters and scenario planners to play out strategic fictions in virtual worlds. Hurricane insurance markets simulate a turbulent climate to offer investment instruments to hedge against the risks of the stock market. And for financial astrologers operating in the city of London, celestial motions provide a cosmic map that orients the mood of terrestrial markets. Bringing together artists, researchers, and interstitial practitioners, Catastrophe Time! pays attention to the conditions of speculative knowledge on an increasingly volatile planet. Traversing a gray zone between rigorous research and operative science fictions, its contributors question how practices of speculation may transform, undermine, and at times exceed, the worlds they set out to model. Edited by artist Gary Zhexi Zhang, Catastrophe Time! explores the power of temporal technologies—whether currencies, conspiracies, or simulation models—to shape reality through fiction. By bringing together researchers and writers working at the boundaries of temporal practices, including Diann Bauer, Philip Grant, Bahar Noorizadeh, Habib William Kherbek, Klara Kofen, Kei Kreutler, Suhail Malik, Bassem Saad and Gordon Woo, this urgent volume seeks to make sense of the unraveling times in which we live.

This book covers both the practical and theoretical aspects of catastrophe modelling for insurance industry practitioners and public policymakers. Written by authors with both academic and industry experience it also functions as an excellent graduate-level text and overview of the field. Ours is a time of unprecedented levels of risk from both natural and anthropogenic sources. Fortunately, it is also an era of relatively inexpensive technologies for use in assessing those risks. The demand from both commercial and public interests—including (re)insurers, NGOs, global disaster management agencies, and local authorities—for sophisticated catastrophe risk assessment tools has never been greater, and contemporary catastrophe modelling satisfies that demand. Combining the latest research with detailed coverage of state-of-the-art catastrophe modelling techniques and technologies, this book delivers the knowledge needed to use, interpret, and build catastrophe models, and provides greater insight into catastrophe modelling’s enormous potential and possible limitations. The first book containing the detailed, practical knowledge needed to support practitioners as effective catastrophe risk modellers and managers Includes hazard, vulnerability and financial material to provide the only independent, comprehensive overview of the subject, accessible to students and practitioners alike Demonstrates the relevance of catastrophe models within a practical, decision-making framework and illustrates their many applications Includes contributions from many of the top names in the field, globally, from industry, academia, and government Natural Catastrophe Risk Management and Modelling: A Practitioner’s Guide is an important working resource for catastrophe modelling analysts and developers, actuaries, underwriters, and those working in compliance or regulatory functions related to catastrophe risk. It is also valuable for scientists and engineers seeking to gain greater insight into catastrophe risk management and its applications.

Being the premier forum for the presentation of new advances and research results in the fields of Industrial Engineering, IEEM 2015 aims to provide a high-level international forum for experts, scholars and entrepreneurs at home and abroad to present the recent advances, new techniques and applications face and face, to promote discussion and interaction among academics, researchers and professionals to promote the developments and applications of the related theories and technologies in universities and enterprises, and to establish business or research relations to find global partners for future collaboration in the field of Industrial Engineering. All the goals of the international conference are to fulfill the mission of the series conference which is to review, exchange, summarize and promote the latest achievements in the field of industrial engineering and engineering management over the past year, and to propose prospects and vision for the further development. This volume is the second of the two proceedings volumes from this conference.

Since the first edition of The Human Side of Disaster was published in 2009, new catastrophes have plagued the globe, including earthquakes in Haiti and New Zealand, tornadoes in Alabama and Missouri, floods in numerous locations, Hurricane Sandy, and the infamous BP oil spill. Enhanced with new cases and real-world examples, The Human Side of Disaster, Second Edition presents an updated summary of the social science knowledge base of human responses to disaster. Dr. Drabek draws upon his 40-plus years of conducting research on individual, group, and organizational responses to disaster to illustrate and integrate key insights from the social sciences to teach us how to anticipate human behaviors in crisis. The book begins with a series of original short stories rooted within actual disaster events. These stories are woven into the entire text to demonstrate essential findings from the research literature. Dr. Drabek provides an overview of the range of disasters and hazards confronting the public and an explanation of why these are increasing each year, both in number and scope of impact. The core of the book is a summary of key findings regarding disaster warning responses, evacuation behavior, initial post-impact survival behavior, traditional and emergent roles of volunteers, and both short-term and longer-term disaster impacts. The theme of "organized-disorganization" is used to illustrate multiorganizational response networks that form the key managerial task for local emergency managers. The final chapter provides a new vision for the emergency management profession—one that reflects a more strategic approach wherein disasters are viewed as non-routine social problems. This book will continue to be an invaluable reference for professionals and students in emergency management and public policy and aid organizations who need to understand human behavior and how best to communicate and work with the public in disaster situations.

Catastrophic risks are much greater than is commonly appreciated. Collision with an asteroid, runaway global warming, voraciously replicating nanomachines, a pandemic of gene-spliced smallpox launched by bioterrorists, and a world-ending accident in a high-energy particle accelerator, are among the possible extinction events that are sufficiently likely to warrant careful study. How should we respond to events that, for a variety of psychological and cultural reasons, we find it hard to wrap our minds around? Posner argues that realism about science and scientists, innovative applications of cost-benefit analysis, a scientifically literate legal profession, unprecedented international cooperation, and a pragmatic attitude toward civil liberties are among the keys to coping effectively with the catastrophic risks.

Die Arbeit erscheint in englischer Sprache. Insurance metrics, in other words the performance measurement of primary insurers and reinsurers, differs strongly from the measurement in industrial companies as well as in the banking sector. This is due to the "inverted" production cycle, where income is generated before expenses appear. The complexity of insurance metrics has increased considerably within the last twenty years following the requests of stakeholders: International accounting (IFRS), regulatory exigencies (solvency II and other) and models from rating agencies. Within the worldwide stock indices the industry does not represent more than 10% to 15% of the market capitalization. Therefore, insurers and reinsurers are under pressure to explain their metrics to gain the interest of the market. This reader includes nine articles revealing these metrics, ranging from a with general comparison to the credit industry to articles dealing with more complex items like the performance measurement in life insurance and disclosure of contracts under IFRS. The reader is a "must" for the industry, analysts as well as investors, students and young actuaries. Edited by Prof. Dr. Dietmar Zietsch (University Ulm, Germany) and Marc von Harpke (SCOR Germany). Versicherungsmetrik beschreibt die Erfolgsmessung von Erst- und Rückversicherern. Sie unterscheidet sich elementar von jenen der Industrieunternehmen und Banken wegen des spezifischen inversen Produktionszyklus, d.h. des Entfalls der Vorfinanzierung durch das Prinzip der Einnahmen vor Ausgaben. Darüber hinaus hat sich die Komplexität der Versicherungsmetrik in den letzten 20 Jahren durch die Anforderungen diverser Stakeholder stark erhöht: Internationale Bilanzierung (IFRS), regulatorische Anforderungen (Solvency II) und Modelle von Ratingagenturen sind hierbei beispielhaft zu nennen. In den Indices der weltweit größten Börsen repräsentieren Versicherer bis zu 15% der jeweiligen Börsenkapitalisierung. Um vom Markt wahrgenommen und auch adäquat beurteilt zu werden, ist die Darstellung und Erläuterung ihrer Erfolgskomponenten von entscheidender Bedeutung. Der Reader versammelt neun Artikel, um diese Metrik offenzulegen - angefangen von generellen Vergleichen mit der Kreditwirtschaft, bis zu komplexeren Themen wie der Erfolgsmessung in der Lebensversicherung und der Einzelvertragsbetrachtung. Ein "Must-have" für die Branche, Analysten und Investoren, Studenten und junge Aktuare. Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Dietmar Zietsch (Universität Ulm) und Marc von Harpke (SCOR Deutschland).