Climate-KIC’s Oasis project hailed as ‘Innovation of the Year’ at industry awards

Climate-KIC project the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework has been named Innovation of the Year at the London Market Awards 2014.

Dickie Withaker, Project Director at Oasis, accepted the award at a ceremony at the Grange Tower Bridge Hotel in London last week (11 June).

The project, a software arena where state of the art extreme weather models are combined with models of damage and financial loss, has produced a tool open to anyone with an interest in creating new catastrophe risk models. Modules for specific catastrophes are available commercially.

Oasis has received €2.8 million in funding from Climate-KIC. It is now co-managed by a group of insurers, reinsurers, brokers and Lloyd’s of London through a not-for-profit company.

Last month, Climate-KIC announced that it will be taking Oasis a step further this year by including the concept into one of its four new flagship programmes totalling €100 million.

The resulting ‘Oasis+’ programme brings together the world’s leading insurers, reinsurers, ICT businesses and weather modellers to make insurance for extreme weather events more accessible and precise.

Software package

The project has produced a software package open to anyone with an interest in creating new catastrophe risk models, with modules available for specific catastrophes. Climate-KIC and its partners have developed a number of commercially available models.

Oasis is designed to operate as a set of plug-and-play web services, which can be developed to meet many and various needs.

Although the insurance industry is expected to be the main user of Oasis, the package can be useful to anyone who is interested in natural catastrophes, not just financial services, but also risk managers in large corporations, governments and inter-governmental bodies.

The London Market Awards are organised by UK financial intelligence publisher Reactions.