Linking Hazard, Exposure, and Risk Across Multiple Hazards

Funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, (NSERC), Chaucer PLC and ICLR =  Collaborative Research and Development Grant

Project time

September 2015 - September 2019

Principal investigators

Slobodan P. Simonovic, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Western University
Kristy F. Tiampo, Professor, Earth Sciences, Western University
Greg A. Kopp, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Western University
Sheri Molnar, Assistant Professor, Earth Sciences, Western University

Project team

Slobodan P. Simonovic, Professor, contact person, email
Jingjing Kong, Post Doctoral Fellow
Ayushi Gaur, MESc Candidate
Abhishek Gaur, Post Doctoral Fellow
Howard Tong, MESc Candidate
Andre Schardong, Post Doctoral Fellow

Project description

Natural hazards represent a significant risk to the people and economy of every country in the world, and are most often a future liability that is difficult to quantify or predict. While societies make significant efforts to protect themselves from disasters, recent data suggests that their impacts have been rising. The insurance industry estimates that insured catastrophic losses average $60 billion (USD) per year and, along with total losses, have increased steadily since 1980 (Munich Re, NatCatSERVICE). The total number of natural catastrophes shows a similar increase that is largely due to an increase in hydrometeorological and climatological events. This research program aims to better characterize and weight the exposure associated with three natural hazards - earthquake, flood and wind - for Canada and around the globe. The specific objective is to define a common framework and currency that allows for the assessment and comparison of natural catastrophic risk across different hazards and provide pragmatic means that fills gaps in current risk management processes of the insurance industry. We will leverage experience and data from the insurance industry and from available public science and insurance industry data to find pragmatic means to calculate and compare risk across disciplines and fill gaps in the risk management framework for government science and the publicly traded (re)insurance companies. The benefits of the proposed research will include new ways to quantify risk for the insurance industry for both Canada and around the world in order to better understand, mitigate and hedge exposure of urban and suburban areas to natural catastrophes. This project provides a platform for PPA (Public, Private and Academic) collaboration on risk research, risk knowledge exchange and model development.

Project Publications

None.

Project Journal Papers

None.

Project Conference Papers

Kropivnitskaya, Y., Qin, J., Tiampo, K., & Bauer, M. (2015). “Pipelining Implementation for High Resolution Seismic Hazard”. International Conference On Computational Science, ICCS 2015 – Computational Science at the Gates of Nature (pp. 1473-1482). Reykjavik: Procedia Computer Science.

Kropivnitskaya, Y., Tiampo, K., Qin, J., & Bauer, M. (2016). “Impact of the Ground Motion Prediction Equation Changes on Eastern Canada Hazard Maps”. 2016 CSCE Annual Conference, 51. London, Canada.

Molnar S. et al, 2016, “Revisiting earthquake site response in Vancouver, Canada”, Poster presentation at SSA, Vancouver, September.

Kong, J. and Simonovic, S.P. 2016. An Original Model of Infrastructure Resilience. Proceedings of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineers Annual Conference, London, Ontario, Canada, June 1-4, 2016.

Project Reports

Jingjing Kong and Slobodan P. Simonovic (2016). Interdependent Infrastructure Network Resilience Model with Joint Restoration Strategy. Water Resources Research Report no. 096, Facility for Intelligent Decision Support, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, London, Ontario, Canada, 83 pages. ISBN: (print) 978-0-7714-3132-6; (online) 978-0-7714-3133-3.

Project Presentations

“A Simulation Approach for Better Understanding of Natural Catastrophe Hazard and Risk” Yelena Kropivnitskaya

“Earthquake site response in southwest British Columbia” Frederick Jackson

“Investigating Shake Map and building inventory inputs to HAZUS and Nonlinear soil response of the Fraser River delta” Sheri Molnar

“Wind-induced damage to residential structures” Sarah Stevenson

“Mapping change in frequency of flooding in Canada due to changing climate” Ayuishi Gaur

“Multi-hazard resilience analysis of municipal infrastructure“ Jingjing Kong and Slobodan Simonovic

Change in Flood Risk Pattern Across Canada Under Changing Climate. Project Meeting Presentation. Presented by Ayushi Gaur and Abhishek Gaur, March, 2017.

Tool for Infrastructure Resilience Evaluation. Project Meeting Presentation. Presented by Howard Tong, Andre Schardong and Slobodan P. Simonovic, March 2017.

An Original Model of Infrastructure System Resilience. CSCE Annual Conference. Presented by Jingjing Kong, London, Ontario, June, 2016.

Change in Flood Risk Across Canada under Changing Climate. Project Meeting Presentation. Presented by Ayushi Gaur, December, 2015.

Simonovic, S.P. (2016), invited lecture, “The Beauty of Resilience - Leaving the Chamber of Risks, Chaucer Seminar, That calls for Understanding Risk”, Chaucer, Copenhagen, Denmark, August.

Simonovic, S.P. (2016), “From risk management to quantitative disaster resilience - a paradigm shift”, Proceedings, RISK2016, 1-12, May 25-27, Crete, Greece.

Simonovic, S.P. (2016), guest lecture, “From Risk Management to Quantitative Resilience: A Paradigm Shift”, Technical University of Denmark, Department of Environmental Engineering, Copenhagen, Denmark, August.