INTER-ACTION - 'Defining how we can act together to manage insurable risk'

英国受到各种自然灾害的影响，如洪水和强风；2015年12月初的风暴Desmond就是一个最近的例子。监管（如建筑规范）、政府反应（如COBRA应急委员会）和各种机构（如环境署）试图减轻影响并管理应对努力，但由于每年高达10亿英镑的赔付，保险部门也可以发挥重要的作用，但往往被低估。从本质上讲，保险是我们在公民/组织之间分摊重建成本和支付资产（例如我们的房屋）维修费用的手段。可靠、准确和公平地提供这种保险是环境科学的基础。通常，可靠的同行评议科学是由学术界完成的，由政府（例如由NERC）资助，并由保险部门转化为诸如“灾难模型”之类的工具来评估风险。然而，这种信息流在许多方面并不完美。这包括，但不止于此，科学家们没有一份保险公司提出的与商业相关的问题清单，这些问题的措辞足够严格，无法让他们进行研究。更根本的是，工业界、学术界或NERC中没有人完全了解保险公司如何、何时或为什么使用NERC的科学。更重要的是，学术界必须产生令人兴奋的原创科学，事实证明，很难建立互利的合作，实现两个目标——即，确定的工作必须满足行业需求，同时也包含（或直接导致）有趣的世界领先的科学。这种不匹配是全球性的，但伦敦的金融实力理想地使英国能够在解决这一问题方面发挥世界领先作用。因此，该奖学金的目的是通过更好的相互理解、共同工作和协作，特别是通过改进结构（例如，学术-保险公司混合的NERC指导小组、“沙坑”项目创建研讨会、协议、“数据共享网络”、数据“中心”、“紧急”NERC资助响应业务需求）来更好地共享信息和共同设计研究，从而促进更好地利用环境科学。该奖学金的工作将集中在当前职位的三个关键方面，我认为这些方面阻碍了NERC环境科学界与保险部门之间高效和有效的互动。首先，也是最根本的是，在Strand 1中，高层研讨会将用于绘制（即确定和报告）如何以及为什么为保险产生环境科学，包括如何做出决策以及哪些科学投入是最有用的。然后绘制“协作路径”，即从学术科学到保险决策的可行、及时和互利的路径。潜在地，这些见解可能会带来科学在环境风险保险中应用的有效性的阶梯式变化。为了实现这一点，Strand 2详细地瞄准了一个可预见的关键方面，即数据共享。法律问题、数据安全和简单的保险公司之间的竞争都是潜在的障碍，但共享数据是有效的，因为它避免了重复的工作，对学者来说，新的数据访问是一个理想的激励。现有的专业知识将被纳入“数据共享网络”，而3个小型项目将集中在一个专家网络上，创建可行的实践和协议，并展示数据共享的可行性。Strand 3将研究如何最好地共同设计研究项目。除了已建立的实践之外，它还将测试创新的方法，例如，将在伦敦和一个科学会议上举行令人兴奋的“沙坑式”会议，其中包括保险公司和学者的混合。拟议的研讨会题目为“现有的科学，新的问题”和“现有的损失数据，新的科学”，说明将从两个方面解决这种不匹配。

The UK is impacted by a variety of natural hazards such as flooding and strong winds; Storm Desmond in early December 2015 is a recent illustration of this. Regulation (e.g. building codes), government response (e.g. the COBRA emergency committee) and various agencies (e.g. Environment Agency) seek to mitigate the effects and manage efforts to respond, but with payouts of up to ~£1 billion per year the insurance sector also has an important and often under-estimated role to play. In essence, insurance is our means to spread the cost of rebuilding between citizens/organizations and across time to pay for the repair of assets (e.g. our houses). Providing such insurance reliably, accurately and fairly is underpinned by environmental science. Typically, robust peer-reviewed science is done by academics, funded by government (e.g. by NERC), and is turned into tools such as 'catastrophe models' to assess risk by the insurance sector. This flow of information is, however, not perfect in a number of respects. This includes, but goes beyond, scientists not having a readily accessible list of current business-relevant questions from insurers that are phrased sufficiently tightly for them to work on. More fundamentally, noone in industry, academia or NERC has a full understanding of how, when or why NERC science is, or could be, used by insurers. Compounding this, academics must produce exciting original science, and it is proving difficult to create collaborations that are mutually beneficial and hit both targets - i.e., identified work must meet industry needs whilst also containing (or directly leading to) interesting world-leading science. This mismatch is global, but London's financial strength ideally places the UK to take a world-leading role in fixing it. The purpose of this fellowship is therefore to facilitate better use of environmental science in insurance through better mutual understanding, co-working and collaboration, particularly by improving structures (e.g. a mixed academic-insurer NERC Guidance Panel, 'sandpit' project-creation workshops, protocols, a 'Data Sharing Network', a data 'hub', 'Urgency' NERC funding responsive to a business need) to better share information and co-design research.The work of this fellowship will focus on 3 key aspects of the current position that I believe hamper efficient and effective interactions between the NERC's environmental science community and the insurance sector.Firstly, and most fundamentally, in Strand 1 high-level workshops will be used to map (i.e. determine and report) how and why environmental science is produced for insurance, including how decisions are make and which scientific inputs are most useful. Then 'collaboration pathways', i.e. feasible, timely, and mutually beneficial routes from academic science to insurance decision-making, can be charted. Potentially, such insights could bring about a step-change in the effectiveness of science usage in environmental risk insurance. To help this occur, Strand 2 targets a foreseeable key aspect in detail i.e., data-sharing. Legal issues, data security and simple inter-insurer competition are all potential barriers, but sharing data can be efficient in that it avoids duplication of effort and new access to data is an ideal incentive for academics. Existing expertise will be captured in a 'Data Sharing Network', whilst 3 mini-projects will focus a network of experts on creating viable practices and protocols, and also to demonstrate the feasibility of data sharing. Strand 3 will work out how to best co-design research projects. Alongside established practice, it will test out innovative methods, for example exciting 'sandpit-style' meetings containing mixes of insurers and academics will held both in London and at a science conference. The proposed workshop titles 'Existing science, new problems' and 'Existing loss data, new science' illustrate that the mismatch will be tackled from both sides.