Description:

Understanding the impacts from climate change extend beyond just quantifying the expected property damage and loss due to changes in hurricane activity. There is growing concern for how development of alternate energy sources and other societal changes driven by new policy may impact future investments. Getting a favorable ESG (environmental, social, and governance) rating influences investors’ decisions, stock prices, returns, and hence the economy. Additionally, there is increasing concern that certain groups will be held liable for the damages from events demonstrated to be impacted from climate change, if not for perpetuating climate change itself. Models are being developed to quantify the risk to insurers from lawsuits to clients who may be held liable. For example, downed power lines can cause wildfires, but who is responsible for the downed power lines if an excessively hot day influenced by climate change caused a line to sag too close to the ground, and then got caught in trees, and then broke? Additionally, the factors that influence one type of loss can influence another type. Too many floods in a region can influence the insurability, value, and property tax of a single dwelling even though it has never flooded. This session will serve as a forum to showcase state-of-the-art modeling techniques that are being developed to quantify the various types of risk associated with climate change. While such a session may be more appropriate for a different type of conference (e.g., in the world of finance), it is equally important to bring this type of information within the sights of climate researchers so they can better understand the needs of this growing sector with growing climate change concerns.