Upcoming Nov. 7 and 8: The CRC’s Resilience Innovation Summit Meets to Tackle Catastrophic Climate Risks
On November 7 and 8, 2023, the Catastrophe Resiliency Council will be hosting a Resilience Innovation Summit in Malvern, Pennsylvania. This first-of-its-kind event will bring together experts from government, regulatory agencies, academia and industry over a day and a half to work together to advance research and development ideas surrounding catastrophes and climate risk.
Participating organizations and institutions include FEMA, the NAIC, Lehigh University, the University of Cincinnati and the University of Alabama, as well as companies such as Chubb, RenaissanceRe and Guy Carpenter.
“Everybody always complains, ‘Why isn’t government working with industry? Why isn’t academia working with government? Why aren’t these guys working together?’ ” said Christopher G. McDaniel, president of the Catastrophe Resiliency Council.
“Here we go. We’re actually going to try to work together.”
The event will begin with a pair of morning keynote addresses. The academic keynote, a State of Climate Risk Overview, will be delivered by Lars Powell, PhD, director of the Alabama Center for Insurance Information and Research at the Culverhouse College of Business, University of Alabama. The industry keynote will be from Andrew Dhesi, senior vice president or corporate risk, RenaissanceRe, who will give an overview of efforts toward creating an open exposure database.
Afterward, attendees will break out into three working groups. One group will focus from an academic standpoint on the kinds of research projects that can be carried out in the climate catastrophe space. Another breakout group will center around one of CRC’s major projects: building out the industry’s first open exposure database. Group members will be asked to think about what kind of projects, dashboards or other utilizations they would like to see built on top of that data. The third group will be a catchall, covering all topics not included in the first two groups.
Following the breakout sessions, each group will present its ideas, and then work will begin on developing a steering committee that will drive those ideas toward actionable items in 2024.
Day one of the conference will begin with a continental breakfast, followed by a conference kickoff and introductions, a statement of the mission and approach for the conference, then the keynotes. A session on breakout definitions and duties will be followed by lunch and then the breakout sessions. The first day will conclude with cocktails and dinner.
The second day will start once again with a continental breakfast, followed by a session on steering committee and administrative process, then reports and discussion on the work of each of the breakout groups before concluding with a summary and closing, which will finish at 12:45.
An affiliate of The Institutes, the Catastrophe Resiliency Council is a group of risk and insurance entities who have come together to address the foundational challenges to the industry in the face of catastrophes and climate risk.
For more information about the Summit or to register, visit theanchorage.info and click on “Agenda, Registration & Travel Arrangements” in the Resilience Innovation Summit banner at the top. &