The Willis Research Network - the world's most important hazard and risk collaboration?

Willis is a large insurance and reinsurance broker based in London. A key part of their primary business lies in arranging insurance for catastrophe risk - i.e. losses from mega-events such as an earthquake in Tokyo or San Francisco, a storm surge flood in London or a volcanic eruption near to Mexico City. Calculating the risks associated with these events is a challenging task, but of course the stakes are high as large events can induce catastrophic losses. Parts of the reinsurance industry was badly burnt by Hurricane Katrina for example. So, in order to calculate the risks and potential losses reinsurance companies use Catastrophe Models (usually called Cat Models), which are complex simulations of the impacts of large events. Getting these models to sensibly estimate potential losses is difficult - and of course requires a good knowledge of the science of the hazard in question.

A few years ago Willis approached one of my colleagues, Prof. Stuart Lane, and I to see if we would be interested in joining a research network that Willis would support. The idea was to bring together key parts of the reinsurance industry and top academic researchers on hazards and risk in order to improve the ways in which risk is modelled and handled in the insurance industry. And so the Willis Research Network was born. Initially the network consisted of seven very carefully chosen UK academic institutions - Durham, Bristol, Reading, City, Cambridge, Exeter and Imperial. Membership of the network is by invitation only, and active participation is ensured through the sponsorship by Willis of a research fellow in each institution.

A few years on, and the network is now an extraordinary entity. That initial group of seven has been joined by universities from the USA (e.g. Princeton and NCAR), Japan (e.g. Kyoto), Italy (e.g. Bologna), Germany (e.g. GFZ Potsdam) and Australia (e.g. SEA). I am pretty sure that it is now the largest and most dynamic academic-industrial hazard and risk network in the world, and it is generating some amazing research.

In the last couple of days the network announced associate membership of ten new institutions, including the British Geological Survey, the UK Met Office, The UK National Oceanography Centre, the Ordnance Survey and GNS Science in New Zealand. Research now spans natural perils, visualisation, social dislocation and financial management. I suspect that over the next few years this network will come to dominate research into catastrophic risk management. The publications section is well worth a look, not least because there are some very useful background presentations there from some of the world's top hazards researchers.

New landslide at the Rest and Be Thankful in Scotland

Probably the most infamous landslide event in recent years in the UK occurred in Scotland in August 2004 when a series of landslides occurred, including one on the A83 at the rather delightfully named "Rest and Be Thankful". The same area was affected again by landslides in 2007. The images from the time were quite spectacular, as shown by the BBC at this web page, which is the 2007 slide:

The slide here, and several other slides on the same day in 2004, prompted quite a major study into landslides on the Scottish Highway system. The report is online here.

The BBC is this afternoon reporting that the road is once again blocked by landslides.:

"A long stretch of the A83 has been shut after a landslide at the Rest and be Thankful road, west of Loch Lomond. Police said westbound traffic was being diverted at Arrochar while eastbound traffic was being diverted at Inverary. According to reports, some heavy vehicles are stuck in mud which has come down from the hillside."

For those interested there is a nice background to the 2004 events here, whilst the BGS have information on the 2007 landslide here.

Scottish landslide study

August 2004 was unusually wet in, with some areas of the country experiencing three times the long term average rainfall for the month. The most memorable manifestation of that time was a series of landslides that hit the road network. In particular, on 18th August a series of debris flows the hit a main road , the A85, in Glen Ogle. This is widely seen as a pretty near miss as over 50 people were trapped between two landslides and had to be rescued by search and rescue helicopters (see below, image from the Scottish Government).


In the aftermath of that event, Transport Scotland promised to undertake a detailed study of the threats posed to the road network by landslides. Tomorrow (Monday) that report will be published at last. It will be very interesting to see what it says, but the Sunday Herald appears to have leaked the main findings. These are as follows:

• Records suggest there have been about 175 major landslides in Scotland over the last century
• The occurrence is increasing with time (note there are many reasons why this might be the case, or might appear to be the case)
• 380 kilometres of the trunk road network are at high risk of landslides.
• 67 locations have been identified with the highest level of hazard (though it is not clear at present whether this is actually high risk in a global sense)
• The A82, A83, A86, A87 A9 are the roads with the biggest hazards
• Parts of the country's key trunk roads, such as the A1, A7, A77, M74 and M90, are also at risk.

The highest risk area is apparently the A82, which runs from Glasgow to Inverness via Fort William. Apparently 16 stretches of the A82 were identified as at high risk, with a 13 km stretch along Loch Lochy, north of Fort William, being rated as the most hazardous (see below from Google Earth).


Now, in many ways none of the above is terribly surprising. The most interesting part though is this (quoting from the Sunday Herald article):

"The Transport Scotland report pointed out that major engineering solutions such as re-routing roads or constructing retaining walls were expensive and intrusive. "It is anticipated that relatively few locations would justify this kind of expenditure," it concluded. Instead, the report suggested that more should be done to improve the public's awareness of the problem. There should be better road signs, improved weather forecasts and more road closures."

It will be interesting to see how this plays out tomorrow, and indeed of course what the report actually states. However, my experience is that the public and the media are rarely happy to have an apparently substantial level of hazard pointed out, but the recommendation then being to do little more than make the public aware. This is the point at which the public and/or the media often adopt a zero tolerance to risk. Incidentally, being told there will be more road closures is unlikely to go down well either. Presumably Transport Scotland will manage this rather carefully!