Partnership aims to accelerate the creation of next generation solutions for communities vulnerable to natural disasters in developing countries.
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Global Parametrics, a company with a social mandate to develop financial products to strengthen resilience to natural disasters in developing countries, to rapidly improve the speed and scale of its climate-related risk modelling.
BSC will give Global Parametrics the capacity to develop a diverse range of climate-related risk models and enhance their acceptance in the risk transfer, financial and investor markets.
The agreement has several strands, including:
- Sponsoring a research specialist, who will develop new applications that expand the frontier of weather and seismic modelling utilising MareNostrum 4
- Collaboration on high speed earthquake simulation, enabling Global Parametrics to be at the forefront of seismic modelling
José María Cela, BSC’s Director of the Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (CASE), stressed that “we’re pleased that our technological capabilities and insight will be used to accelerate progress in building resilience around climate change and driving financial inclusion in developing markets. This partnership with Global Parametrics aligns perfectly with our mission to be a leader in the innovative application of computation to non-conventional fields and it also allows us to deepen our own academic expertise in a new and important area.”
Global Parametrics, backed by DFID in the UK and KfW in Germany, is looking to expand its reach and capabilities in Europe and beyond by collaborating with organisations like BSC, to help grow a global network and increase its capacity to deploy this technology for commercial and sustainable use.
This agreement is very important to Global Parametrics as “we explore opportunities that mainstream industry is unable to, particularly in creating partnerships that will help us to achieve market development in emerging economies. Ultimately, we aim to become a leading incubator for growing the financial disaster risk management market, with a particular focus on accelerating financial inclusion and building the resilience of vulnerable communities affected by catastrophic disasters and major climate events", according to Héctor Ibarra, CEO of Global Parametrics