The Proposed Center for Climate Risk Applications – Tackling the Insurance Crisis Due to Climate Change

Climate change is already shifting the landscape of natural hazards, and the US economy is impacted to the tune of billions of dollars each year. The Center for Climate Risk Applications (CCRA), with the combined expertise of George Mason, CUNY, and MIT, will tackle the climate science challenges at the spatial and temporal scales needed to protect human life and property, and provide private and public sector partners with the information and data they need. Across much of the US, homeowners’ insurance for example is either in crisis or headed to crisis from the direct or indirect impacts of the changing climate driving unpredictability with existing tools and increased peril. The CCRA is being formed and proposed under an NSF planning grant supported by NOAA. Precompetitive research is funded by memberships of the insurance, reinsurance, finance and associated companies and organizations and selected by the Center’s industry board to serve industry needs. To plan the Center, we have executed an extensive campaign of customer discovery and related research and conducted a planning meeting to define research. In this paper, we will address our findings and plan for the proposed Center.