Background

In order to meet humanitarian needs both before and after disasters happen, risk pools such as Start Ready, African Risk Capacity, and the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility pay out pooled funds to members based on a defined set of triggers, such as flood forecast probabilities. To set the trigger thresholds and ensure financial sustainability, risk pools therefore rely on financial modelling based around the expected number of extreme events that will happen in a season, informed by historical events, seasonal forecasts where available, and climate projections.

If we had perfect knowledge of the probabilities of each kind of extreme event, then the financial modelling would be relatively simple. However, the historical record is relatively sparse, seasonal forecasts are subject to high levels of uncertainty, and climate projections are limited by the uncertainty of trend detection and attribution as well as multi-model divergence.

PhD project

This project combines climate science, data science, and decision science. Predictability of climatic extremes as they evolve in a changing climate is a theme of many UNRISK projects, and while you aren’t expected to go into all hazards in depth, you’ll be able to draw on the expertise of your supervisors and fellow students to bring together a cross-cutting perspective on changing climate extremes as they affect humanitarian risk pooling. Your data science skills will be critical to this project, starting by understanding the basic financial modelling approaches used by the various risk pools, and then looking in more detail at how climate uncertainties influence their bottom line, both on an annual basis and into the future. You’ll need to integrate a variety of uncertainties (small numbers, high interannual variability, model divergence, confidence in models) and consider the ways in which different uncertainties can be addressed or their effects minimised. Most importantly, you’ll need to spend a lot of time thinking about the implications of your work for the decision-making strategies of these organisations, both to understand the context and constraints of the risk pools, and later to offer recommendations for resilient operations under uncertainty and a changing climate.

This project offers you an opportunity to use your mathematical skills to support climate resilient decision-making, and to develop a strong profile between the topics of climate change, catastrophe modelling, and financial modelling. At the end of this PhD, you could continue on an academic career pathway, or would also be well-positioned to begin a career in catastrophe modelling, insurance, finance, or in the humanitarian sector, where your skills will be highly sought after.

Applicant Profile

We would like to see applications from students with a strong mathematical background and an interest in supporting financial modelling in the non-profit sector. If you are excited about applying and developing your mathematical skills to support climate resilience worldwide, please get in touch. (Experience working with climate or seasonal forecasting tools, or in the humanitarian sector, would be a useful background but is not required.)

Other Information

https://www.ericathompson.co.uk/
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/news/2025/may/innovative-humanitarian-risk-pool-draws-work-steapps-erica-thompson-2-may-2025