Event Summary
Speakers
- Cristina Stefan, Global Risk Platform, World Bank
- Mark Gallivan, Metabiota
- Rosmarie DeWit, ZAMG, Austria
- Bogdan Carlescu, Bitdefender, Romania
Description
Friday 29 November, 14:00 – 15:30, Nicolae Balcescu Room
European countries are exposed to a range of natural and man- made risks, including floods, earthquakes, or terrorists’ attacks. However, in addition to these more well-known perils, risks such as epidemics, cyber-attacks or extreme heat events, are increasingly manifesting, facilitated by higher interconnectivity and population mobility, and in some cases by climate change. There is a need to better understand and anticipate these emerging risks, as well as to reflect on early actions and preparedness measures relative to their impact. For example, these threats may not confined to one place, may not progress in an easily predictable way and have long- developing effects. These kinds of traits have made it difficult to apply traditional risk management tools.
The session will discuss their different nature from more traditional hazards, and applied strategies in the management of these perils. Experts from various fields will share knowledge on the latest advancements and applications of their work in measuring and preparing against these “atypical” catastrophes. Today’s improving data technologies, and the robust models they are enabling should allow better informed business and political leaders to mitigate and contain the disruption and losses triggered by emerging risks.
Speaker bios
Cristina Stefan joined the World Bank as part of the FCV/GCRP team, in the role of Sr. Risk Monitoring Specialist, leading the design and implementation of a cross-World Bank initiative on multi-sector risk modelling and early warning system that integrates analysis of conflict, natural disasters, food inse-curity and pandemics, called the Global Crisis Risk Platform (GCRP). Cristina has 9 years of experience as a Life & Health Actuary, focused on insurance product design and pricing. Prior to joining the Bank she was Head of Insu-rance Solutions at Metabiota, an infectious disease risk analytic company, where she was leading projects focused on modeling and quantifying the microeconomic impact of infectious disease risk on companies’ and insurance portfolios, and the macroeconomic impact of pandemics. Her most recent work revolves around collaboration with internationalorganizations for the development of parametric sovereign insurance products aiming at closing the epidemic insurance gap and improving containment measures for countries considered to be “at-risk”. She was also heavily involved in the development and operationalization of vulnerability indices (pandemic pre-paredness index, pandemic fear index) that support the definition of payout triggers for novel parametric insurance products covering the vulnerability of the private markets to epidemic catastrophic events.
Mark Gallivan is the Director of Data Science at Metabiota where he resear-ches, programs, and creates mathematical models to estimate the burden of infectious disease outbreaks and effects of mitigation measures. Over the past three years with Metabiota, Mark has built out data and modeling pipelines incorporating mobility and spark models into global, large-scale disease spread simulations. At Metabiota, Mark has published on epidemic preparedness, catastrophe risk modeling, and using social media data to estimate the economic impact of the Zika virus epidemic. Previous to Metabiota, he led the influenza surveillance program for the California Department of Public Health and has completed two CDC-sponsored fellowships in emer-ging infectious diseases and applied epidemiology. Mark received his MPH at the University of Washington and BS in Microbiology at the University of Minnesota.
Dr.Rosmarie de Wit joined the urban modelling team at ZAMG, Austria’s national weather service, in 2016, after a postdoctoral fellowship at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Her work has since focused on alternative data sources to characterize urban heat islands, as well as interdisciplinary projects dealing with climate risks for cultural heritage and urban infrastructure projects. Outreach and science communication are a key part of her work.
Bogdan Carlescu is Acting Cybersecurity Professional and Sr. Product Marke-ting Manager at Bitdefender and has extensive international experience in various roles across IT Industry, including IT Systems Integration, Cybersecuri-ty, Sales Engineering and Product Management. He enjoys combining his en-gineering background with industry knowledge and business sense to fulfill his professional mission: help businesses grow by leveraging technology.