Fathom’s Oliver Wing wins Allianz Climate Risk Research Award 2019

Four finalists out of dozens of entries were chosen to present their work to leading scientists and industry figures at Allianz HQ on the topic of research into climate-related risks.
Amidst tough competition, we were delighted that the panel of experts chose Oliver to be the overall winner in lieu of his world-leading research into the understanding of flood risk at large spatial scales.
Oliver has been working with us since 2016, when he began a Fathom-funded PhD under Paul Bates and Jeff Neal at the University of Bristol. In this time, he has led the publication of our critical research papers that constitute his PhD thesis. All of his work relates to Fathom-US, our award winning flood hazard model of the United States. In particular, Oliver’s work has involved: the most comprehensive validation of a large-scale flood model to date (Water Resources Research, 2017); updating flood risk estimates from those calculated when using deficient FEMA maps (Environmental Research Letters, 2018); the development of a US flood inundation forecasting framework (Journal of Hydrology X, 2019); and a levee detection algorithm to ensure necessary flood defence representation in large-scale models (Water Resources Research, 2019).
Allianz has published ten selected essays from the award, including Ollie’s, in a compendium on their website.
We are thrilled that the science and products pioneered by Fathom – and the tenacity and innovation displayed by one of our team – has been recognised in this way by Allianz. Ollie is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol, exploring the development of global CAT models.