RMS plans to give governments access to multi-peril risk modeling tool

Risk Management Solutions Inc. recently announced it plans to partner with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction to offer governments access to its RMS(one) catastrophe modelling product.

“The UNISDR’s new global, multi-peril, probabilistic risk model will be freely available to all public and private sector users of RMS(one) to use for risk assessment of major natural hazards in every country, worldwide,” stated RMS, of Newark, Calif., in a press release July 1. “It will be released in March 2015 at the 3rd World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction.”

That conference is scheduled in Sendai, Japan.

“Availability of our model on RMS(one) will greatly increase its relevance towards achieving the broader objective of risk sensitive public and private sector investment, in particular in low and lower-middle income countries and regions where commercial catastrophe models are not currently available,” Andrew Maskrey, coordinator of the UNISDR’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, said in a release.

“Modeling companies are already implementing more than 300 catastrophe models on the RMS(one) platform for use in the insurance industry, and that’s just the start,” RMS chief products officer Paul VanderMarck stated in the release. “Now we’re inviting the broader global community of risk modelers that is supporting public sector disaster risk reduction work to also take advantage of RMS(one).”

RMS says the UNISDR multi-peril risk model “was developed in collaboration with The Center for Numerical Models in Engineering (CIMNE) and its associates, the Centre for Research in Environmental Monitoring (CIMA Foundation), United Nations Environment Program GRID (UNEP), Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), Geo Science Australia, European Commission Joint Research Centre, Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry lands (ACSAD) Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET), and World Agency of Planetary Monitoring and Earthquake Risk Reduction (WAPMERR).”

RMS added the World Bank “is supporting a partnership between RMS and catastrophe-risk specialists ERN to implement the Comprehensive Approach to Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA) framework on RMS(one).”

CAPRA started in 2008 as a partnership between UNISRD, the Center for Coordination of Natural Disaster Prevention in Central America (CEPREDENAC), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and The World Bank “as a means to raise awareness among client countries in Central America by providing them with a set of tools that would let them better understand the risk of adverse natural events,” CARPA states on its website.

RMS says CARPA models include information on earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, landslides and volcanoes.