ImageCat hosted session at the 2016 Understanding Risk Forum in Venice, Italy

08 Jul 2016

ImageCat and GFDRR/World bank hosted 2016 Understanding Risk session on post-disaster response and using the response information effectively to improve risk models

The Understanding Risk Forum 2016 in Venice, Italy was the venue for a special session on the uncertainties in risk models and how  well the risk models performed in predicting the extent and magnitude of disaster impacts. In many cases, our models surprise us with their accuracy, but more often than not, the scale of the disaster is over or under estimated. Post-disaster response technologies offers us with mechanism and processes for determining why our risk models fail; however, is this information being effectively utilized to improve our risk models? This was the primary question of the session that was introduced by Ron Eguchi, President/CEO of ImageCat.

During an Ignite presentation (rapid 5-minute talks) Ron Eguchi presented the panel topic and the panelists. The main panel titled “Reading the tea leaves: When risk models fail to predict disaster impacts” featured discussions on the Haiti earthquake of 2010, The Christchurch earthquake of 2011, 2011 Tohoku earthquake, 2013 Typhoon Haiyan, and 2015 Nepal Earthquake.

Panelists included: Ron Eguchi (Session Lead and Chair), ImageCat and Alanna Simpson, GFDRR (Session Lead).

Speakers included: Kelvin Berryman (GNS Science), David Lallemant (Stanford University), Keiko Saito (GFDRR), John Bevington (ImageCat), Fumio Yamazaki (Graduate School of Engineering Chiba University, Japan).

This interactive session highlighted cases where risk models were effective in approximating the extent of a disaster damage and where they fell short. Panelists examined the reasons for model efficacy.

Session Details

Ignite Video