Climate change is creating new challenges for finance and business, and the CGFI Leeds Innovation Hub is helping to meet these through our internship programme. The programme has aimed to develop the next generation of physical climate risk analysts, while tackling real-world, climate/finance challenges faced by businesses and financial institutions.
For our first internship, we partnered with flood risk consultancy and modelling company JBA Risk Management. JBA’s flood maps, catastrophe models, and data are used by some of the world’s largest insurers, reinsurers, financial institutions, property companies, and governments. Climate change ‘loads the dice’ for extreme events such as floods, potentially affecting their severity, frequency, and location.
By the end of the project, Bailey had delivered a fully documented, Bayesian hierarchical model of extreme rainfall for the UK, creating a new way for the company to think about incorporating climate change to date in its future products.
As a result, JBA will be well-placed to deliver the next generation of state-of-the-art flood risk analysis for their clients.
The success of the internship demonstrated the power and the importance of connecting young researchers with businesses – bringing innovative thinking and technical expertise to crucial climate challenges.
