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Article | WTW Research Network Newsletter

WTW Research Network Annual Review 2022: Science for Resilience

May 26, 2022

The WTW Research Network is an award-winning collaboration supporting and influencing science to improve the understanding and quantification of risk, with the aim to improve the resilience of our clients and society as a whole.
Climate|Risk and Analytics|Corporate Risk Tools and Technology||Environmental Risks|Work Transformation|Property Risk and Insurance Solutions
Beyond Data|Climate Risk and Resilience|Geopolitical Risk

Welcome to the latest review of our research portfolio, which continues to bring leading-edge science into our worlds of people, capital and risk management.

We started this 16th year with a name change: formerly Willis Research Network, we will now go by the name WTW Research Network, to better reflect the expansion of our research portfolio across all of WTW. The aim of the WTW Research Network remains to foster and integrate open science-based approaches to support clients and wider stakeholders to consider their risks and growth opportunities.

This involves a careful balance between embracing the complexity of science (to understand the challenge) whilst distilling and integrating the key insights in a simple and relevant way (to support decision-making).

2022 continues to show us a need for heightened awareness and understanding around people-related risks. The COVID-19 pandemic enters its third year of disruption, whilst conflict in Ukraine and an ensuing humanitarian crisis show the interconnectedness that impacts day-to-day life for people across the globe. Geopolitical risk research continues to be a key area of focus with partners including Oxford Analytica, the University of Cambridge, the American Enterprise Institute and more to follow.

Our established portfolio of research across the full spectrum of risks (natural hazards, people and technology, emerging risks, organizational resilience) continues to grow. It matches our evolving vision of current and future risks, our emphasis on organizational resilience to complement the traditional risk view, and the growing importance of ESG and sustainability (with a nod to the WTW Thinking Ahead Institute and its influential thought-leadership for investors). These three themes align with perspectives highlighted by our CEO Carl Hess in his vision statement at the beginning of the year.

Once again this year, to inject new perspectives into our research portfolio, the WTW Research Network invited its members (and potential new partners) to submit short collaborative research projects via our Challenge Fund program. It’s a chance to experiment with new ideas and try new methods to answer questions we are seeing, or address topics that may be underrepresented. In 2022 our new themes are: relationships with technology, and the influence of climate change on human health and wider societal impacts. We hope that you find the WTW Research Network review a useful summary of some of the work we have underway and our growing membership.

Our thanks to all our research partners, WTW Research Network team, clients and colleagues for last year’s progress, including colleagues at Gallagher Re with whom we continue to work closely on a number of these projects. We cannot think of a more pressing time to be harnessing the Network’s capabilities to support lives, livelihoods and assets in the volatile decade we are in.

WTW Research Network Annual Review Topics 2022

Weather and Climate

  • Valuing climate risks in real estate markets
  • Representing European windstorm risk in the past, the present and in the future
  • Utilizing latest climate models to assess severe convective storm risks
  • Towards a multiperil assessment of tropical cyclone hazards in current and future climates
  • Accelerating research applications with the WTW Research Network’s Challenge Fund 2021

Flood & Water Management

  • City catchment analysis
  • Adjusting a global flood model
  • Satellite imaging reveals increased proportion of population exposed to floods worldwide
  • Present-day and future flood risk in Puerto Rico

Earth

  • Earth Risk – A Tale Of Two Halves
  • Improving catastrophic loss estimation using supercomputing
  • An integrated end-to-end approach to time-dependent earthquake risk assessment
  • Realtime risk: Forecasting next year’s hazard in the cities that rim the Marmara Sea
  • The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami 10 years on

Special Feature: Risk in the Aviation Sector

  • Bracing for transition to a net zero and more resilient aviation sector

People

  • Understanding political risk
  • Whole of society approaches to improve preparedness for crises
  • Resilience to hostile activities of the grayzone

Technology

Special Feature: TMT Risks on the Horizon

Organizational Resilience

  • Modeling exposure in commercial property insurance
  • The use of AI to automate estimation of exposure in commercial property insurance

Emerging Risks

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Title File Type File Size
WTW Research Network Annual Review 2022 PDF 25 MB
Contacts

Head of People Risks Research,
Managing Director of WTW Research Network
email Email

Head of Technology Risks Research,
Programme Director and Climate & Resilience Hub
email Email

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