Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a wide-ranging impact in areas of interest to practicing actuaries. Correlations exist between the pandemic and many topics varying across a range of practice areas. The SOA Catastrophe & Climate Strategic Research Program Steering Committee has sponsored these visualizations exploring the correlation between the COVID-19 pandemic and a theme of choice of the individual contributing authors.

Description: The SOA Research Institute conducted an online survey of 2,000 U.S. respondents about their perspectives on climate risks. Majorities say extreme weather has impacted their health, property, communities and feelings of general safety. Read the report for details and peruse infographics on findings from other climate risk studies by the SOA Research Institute.

Description: This report provides statistical summaries of global warming trends using ERA5 data. The report compares temperature data from different time periods and highlights warming trends across air and sea-surface temperatures.

Description: The document is about the post-wildfire drinking water crisis and its implications for the insurance industry. It discusses the contamination of drinking water systems by wildfires, remediation strategies, financial considerations for the insurance industry, and potential contributions from the actuarial community.

Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute commissioned a study to understand how insurers are responding to the framework used for climate disclosure practices, attempting to identify current practice and best and emerging practice. Used by firms to ensure they manage climate risk appropriately, the framework from the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) focuses on disclosure of governance, risk management, strategy, and metrics.

Description: On March 31, 2022, the SOA Research Institute assembled an expert panel to discuss key considerations related to climate risk analysis applied to life and health insurance companies. The panelists were selected to represent a wide and diverse array of opinions, and were encouraged to contribute from their own, individual perspective working in areas such as insurance, reinsurance, state regulation, consultancy, meteorology, and climate finance. A summary of the main discussion points is presented in this report.

Description: In this Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute report, authored by consultants from Milliman, Inc. (Milliman) we aim to study the effects of hurricanes on human health: whether there is a relationship between hurricanes and the observed prevalence of healthcare utilization or certain health conditions among the affected population, whether this relationship can be observed through a healthcare utilization dataset, and whether there is an interaction between this observation and metrics of socioeconomic vulnerability.

Description: This report is targeted to actuaries that are interested in identifying the adverse human health outcomes resulting from anthropogenic climate change. This is accomplished by providing a detailed framework to evaluate the impact of extreme heat on human health and identify the role that anthropogenic climate change has on extreme heat events. Although this document is designed around extreme heat, the concepts can be expanded to other climate-related events. As the primary focus of actuarial research is to promote human health and minimize the preventable economic burden, this document also provides recommendations to mitigate against excess heat related illness (HRI) due to extreme heat.

Description: This report series identifies and examines weather extremes in North America and beyond. Using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), NOAA Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), United States Geological Survey (USGS), and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) among others; the reports identify and summarize unusual or extreme single-day or multi-day weather events which are significant in an historical context. The most recent report covers the tremendous scale of Hurricane Ian as it hit Florida and the geographic range of the perils associated with the hurricane.

Description: Catastrophe & Climate Strategic Research Program Newsletter - April 2021