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Illustrative: an implied-volatility surface over strike and maturity with its smile and term structure, or a rolling spectrogram

Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium · Finance and Economics

Department of Banking and Financial Stability

The department reads the banking system as a network of exposures that carries shocks from one balance sheet to the next: a default raises expected loss, a run drains liquidity, a fire sale moves prices, a laundering network hides in the flows.

01Map

How its disciplines connect

02Disciplines

Disciplines of the department

A filled mark is one open course in the discipline.

03Maps

Build a twin of any place

Search any place or open the world; the layers and generators follow department of Banking and Financial Stability on the planet map, the globe and in 3D.

Houston and the Ship Channel: a flat plan of the faculty twin. Terrain 0 to 66 m; 30 power plants, 11,875 MW; 7 refineries and chemical works; 2 port land; 29 named works; 154 named industrial sites; Surface water extent, OPERA DSWx (HLS): read live when the 3D twin opens; Built-up and settlement extent, HBASE 2010: read live when the 3D twin opens. Contours every 10 metres from the elevation grid; power plants as marks; refineries, terminals and industrial sites as marks.
Houston and the Ship Channel, United States. 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 that can draw it, once its data and code have been checked.
  • Terrain 0 to 66 m
  • 30 power plants, 11,875 MW
  • 7 refineries and chemical works
  • 2 port land
  • 29 named works
  • 154 named industrial sites
  • Surface water extent, OPERA DSWx (HLS): read live when the 3D twin opens
  • Built-up and settlement extent, HBASE 2010: read live when the 3D twin opens
Credits and dates per layer are listed under the stage. Relief in the twin is exaggerated ×1.5 for legibility.

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 that can draw it, once its data and code have been checked.

The boundaries, names and designations shown do not imply any judgement on the legal status of any territory, or any endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Countries: Natural Earth (public domain).

04Live map

Activity and exposure in the Gulf of Mexico coast

Night-time lights and population, a proxy for economic activity, with the floods and fires that put assets at risk, over the Gulf of Mexico coast.

The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.

Layers 2

Activity and exposure

Latest available

NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth

Loading the latest NASA imagery.

Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.

Activity and exposure, framed on the Gulf of Mexico coast.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.

Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA EONETSources and licences

  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • VIIRS Black Marble night-time lights, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; distributed by the NASA Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive and Distribution System (LAADS DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University. 2018. Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4): Population Density, Revision 11. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). doi:10.7927/H49C6VHW. CC BY 4.0
  • VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), VIIRS 375 m active fire product, NASA LANCE; vector tiles via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
  • Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). ODbL
  • Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
  • Globe: MapLibre GL JS 6.9.1, BSD-3-Clause, © MapLibre contributors.
  • Live events: NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET); events are indicative and keep their original source links.
  • NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
  • Optional layers (4 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.

Layers and dates

  • Night-time lights, daily: VIIRS Black Marble (VNP46A2), NASA LAADS DAAC · 12 Oct 2026
  • Population density, 2020: Population: CIESIN, Columbia University, Gridded Population of the World v4.11 (2018), NASA SEDAC, CC BY 4.0 · static
  • Flood water, 3-day composite: VIIRS Global Flood Product, NASA LANCE · 14 Oct 2026
  • Active fires and thermal anomalies: VIIRS NOAA-20 375 m (FIRMS), NASA LANCE FIRMS · 13 Oct 2026
  • Land surface temperature, day, 8-day composite: VIIRS NOAA-20 Level 3, 8-day, NASA LANCE · 14 Sep 2026

05Console

How the Banking and Financial Stability department teaches, as a process you can run

Press Play to run this process from this page's own data.

06Standards and evidence

Standards and evidence, research and evidence, learning, practice and connections

Nexus Standards it teaches and relies on

The Nexus Standards the department teaches toward, grouped by master standard, with the disciplines that teach each.

Nexus Standards at the AcademyThe Academy proposes how each discipline teaches toward the Nexus Standards; the mapping is open for public review.

07Take part

Take part in Finance and Economics

Start from who you are.

08Questions

Questions, answers and key terms

Is study here free?
Yes. Every course and learning material of Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium, is free to study, self-paced or with a cohort. Ordinary participation has no fee; paid work, internships and fellowships are separate arrangements.
What does completing a course give me?
A completion record: the course, its version, the date and what was assessed, private by default and shared by you. It stacks into discipline, department and programme achievements. A record states what was studied and assessed and does not certify competence; it is not a licence, a professional title or an employment status.
Where do the data and the places come from?
Every faculty teaches on a twin of a real place built from open data; each layer carries its provider, licence and date, and every result on the Academy states its source. Maps and figures are indicators for teaching, never an assessment of a place.
How do I take part beyond the department's courses?
Form a competence cell of three to seven people, study a shared pathway, take a supervised assignment in the National Working Groups, or bring a cohort from your institution. For organisations.

Key terms

Term

Banking and credit risk

This area covers the risks banks take and manage: credit and counterparty risk, capital and liquidity, governance and risk culture, operational resilience, climate and nature risk in lending, property finance and the models banks use.

Term

Financial stability and systemic financial risk

This area covers the resilience of banks, insurers, markets and market infrastructure to shocks, and the channels through which stress spreads across the financial system and into the real economy.

Term

Financial regulation and supervision

This area covers the objectives and instruments of financial regulation: prudential and macroprudential regulation, supervisory approaches and data, conduct and consumer protection, cross-border supervision, fintech regulation, crisis management and disclosure regimes.

Term

Financial crime and fraud

This area covers money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, fraud and scams, identity fraud and cyber-enabled financial crime, and the risk-based controls used to detect and prevent them.

ReportsContribute

Contribute evidence from this page.

Reports is the Consortium's quarterly publication. What you know about this subject can become evidence, a case or a correction in the next edition, credited to you and published under CC BY 4.0 where it is your own work.

Risk Academy
Department of Banking and Financial Stability

Choose a discipline

Each discipline page sets out its scope, courses, labs, technology and key terms.