The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Risk Academy, a Nexortium programmeFinance and EconomicsDepartment of Insurance and Actuarial Science
Risk layering, contingency budgets, contingent credit, parametric cover and catastrophe bonds
Disaster risk finance plans in advance how the costs of disasters will be met.
risksacademy.comfinance-economicsdiscipline
Twin figures for Houston and the Ship Channel, counted from its layers at their stated dates.
For Disaster risk finance: the faculty's twin of Houston on the planet map, the globe and in 3D. Pick a generator, switch layers, run the instruments; every layer prints its provider and date.
Drag to move, right drag or Shift with a drag to turn and tilt, Ctrl with the wheel to zoom. Keyboard: arrows move, Shift with arrows turn and tilt, + and - zoom, 0 resets, V steps through the views, Escape clears.
Flat plan of the same data: relief as contours from the inline grid, the plants by capacity, the industrial points by kind and the numbers below. The 3D twin opens on devices with WebGL once its data and library have been checked.
The map loads from this site as it nears the view (MapLibre 6.9.1, checked by hash).
The discipline teaches risk layering by return period, contingency funds and budgets, contingent credit, parametric insurance and regional risk pools, catastrophe bonds, whose market had a record issuance year in 2025, pre-arranged finance for anticipatory action with forecast triggers, sovereign contingent liabilities and post-disaster financing, with the basis risk of each parametric layer measured against the losses it is meant to cover, and the Sendai Framework and the InsuResilience vision as the policy frames. The faculty's loss-exceedance instrument on the Houston portfolio is the layering exercise: read the losses at each return period and assign a budget, a credit line, a cover and a bond to them. A graduate can design a risk layering for a government's disaster costs, specify a parametric trigger and quantify its basis risk, and write the pre-arranged finance plan for an anticipatory action with its trigger and its evidence.
Disaster risk finance plans in advance how the costs of disasters will be met. It is taught in the department of Insurance and Actuarial Science, Faculty of Finance and Economics, through courses still to be authored and 3 more that also teach it.
8 subtopics, taught across its courses and labs.
Recent developments in disaster risk finance, each with its source; sources checked on 16 October 2026. Summaries are short readings of the source; follow the link for the full account.
News and research as they are published, per discipline, with the faculty's other tools.
The newest research, preprints, news and humanitarian reports for Disaster risk finance, each with its source and date, load here. Open the research and news hub
No course has this as its primary discipline yet. It is listed so the gap stays visible.
Courses also taught here and the connected disciplines teach the methods it will build on.
These courses count in their own primary discipline and also teach this one; they do not count towards its achievement as primary courses.
| Lab | What you do in it | Courses using it |
|---|---|---|
| Exposure lab | Overlay people and assets with hazard footprints | 3 |
| Trigger lab | Set forecast thresholds, pre-agreed actions and messages | 2 |
| Map lab | Read hazard, exposure and boundaries on real maps | 1 |
Nexus Foundry system pages describe what each system and its rooms are designed to do; they are not a service on offer, and studying here gives no access to them.
The catalogue lists each course with its outcomes, labs, hours and level.