Eco:Actuary Policy Support System - Training and guidelines

Description

Eco:Actuary is a policy support system for understanding the role of natural flood management in flood mitigation. It maps hazard, exposure, loss, mitigation and avoided loss for the current natural capital of a catchment and for scenarios of climate change and of nature-based solution investment, and it works globally, with data provided for application anywhere.

The system is built from five modules: potential risk of hazard, modelled as a catastrophe model; asset inventory and the distribution of value; damage functions; mitigation by green and grey infrastructure; and the resulting realised risk. Working with the Co$tingNature policy support system, Eco:Actuary can also be used to assess the co-benefits of an intervention beyond hazard mitigation.

This training programme accompanies the guidelines and is kept live — the material is updated as the toolkit develops rather than issued once. It covers the application of each module in turn and works through the three UK-centred applications documented in the guidelines: a baseline assessment, flood risk under climate change, and flood risk under a scenario in which protected areas are reforested.

What the training covers

The purpose and structure of the policy support system and how its modules fit together. How to set up and run a hazard ensemble, build an asset inventory, and interpret the damage functions that connect the two. How to represent mitigation by green and grey infrastructure, and how to read the avoided loss that results. How to run climate and land use scenarios on the same basis as the baseline, so that the effect of an intervention can be compared with the effect of a changing climate. How to move from hazard mitigation to the wider co-benefit assessment when the decision requires it.

How it is delivered

Online, self-paced, with the guidance documents, worked applications and live training materials available from the Eco:Actuary and policy support websites. The material is oriented towards the user who has a catchment, a decision and a limited amount of time, and it is written so that an assessment can be produced without commissioning a modelling team.

Who it is for

Analysts and advisers in the insurance and reinsurance sector; risk strategists in regional and national government; river basin and flood authorities; NGOs and conservation bodies; and investors who need to establish the scale of an intervention before committing to an appraisal.