CGI to develop a proof of concept to forecast impact of severe windstorms in the next 35 years
23 February 2016 – CGI has been awarded a two year contract by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the EU Copernicus programme to develop a proof-of-concept for a Sectoral Information Service (SIS) focused on the insurance sector. Funded by the European Commission, Copernicus uses information collected from satellite, land, sea and air to help industry and business sectors as well as policy-makers and scientists to understand and mitigate climate threat, adapt to change and capitalise on business opportunities. CGI’s project aims to work with the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) to make the Copernicus climate change data more accessible to the different industrial and public sector user communities.
The number and size of losses suffered by the insurance sector due to natural disasters caused by atmospheric hazards, and severe wind storms in particular, has increased steadily over recent decades. CGI will lead a team of specialists including two national meteorological agencies, two universities, and industrial partners from the space and insurance sectors to develop the Wind Storm Information Service (WISC)proof of concept tohelp the insurance sector better understand the level of risk.
CGI will develop and integrate the WISC platform which will take data on hundreds of historical windstorms, going as far back as 1900, and input it to an advanced catastrophe modelling framework to produce high-quality forecasts of potential future losses from severe windstorms. The project will produce key indicators such as number of European winter windstorms per year, average maximum wind speed of winter windstorms and average storm severity.
CGI will lead the insurance sector engagement to ensure the service delivers the most useful information, including forecasts of the total insurance losses per year due to windstorms and the total losses of transport infrastructure per year. The information generated by WISC will also support planning for the impact of climate change in other sectors such as energy, transport, civil engineering and government.
Jean-Noël Thépaut, Head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at ECMWF, said “A key objective of the Copernicus Climate Change Service is to combine observations of the climate system with the latest science to develop authoritative information about the past, current and future states of the climate and its impacts. We are delighted that CGI is leading this first proof-of-concept and has brought together an experienced team to demonstrate how this service can bring clear benefits to the insurance sector”
“We are proud of our 40 year heritage in the space industry and pleased to have secured our first contract with ECMWF under the Copernicus Climate Change Service” said Steve Smart, SVP of Space, Defence, National and Cyber Security at CGI. “We understand the huge potential of exploiting climate data from space, into information services which bring business benefit to commercial markets. We are excited to work with the insurance sector to demonstrate the value that the Wind Storm Information Service can deliver to them and we intend to develop other services in the future”.
CGI delivers complex, mission-critical space systems and works on the major European navigation, communication and earth observation programs such as Galileo, Skynet 5, Iris Precursor and Copernicus. Our systems produce weather satellite images and data for over 3 billion people across Europe, Asia Pacific and Africa and we deliver the maintenance and evolution of ESRIN’s earth observation ground systems.