Outside many homes on Bermuda, curious-looking bottles hang from porches. These are shark oil barometers, homemade devices that for nearly 300 years have been used by islanders who swear that the oil can predict the severity of approaching storms and hurricanes.

At the intersection of oceanographic science and the (re)insurance industry stands the Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI), founded in 1995 by a group of local Bermudian insurers and reinsurers and BIOS.

While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted summer internship plans for many university students, Amber Wolffe, an undergraduate student in meteorology and mathematics at Metropolitan State University in Denver (Colorado, USA), overcame these challenges to complete an eight-week Bermuda Program internship with the Bermuda Weather Service (BWS, a section of the Bermuda Airport Authority). Since 1976, the BIOS Bermuda Program has selected a handful of budding scientists each year to receive paid fellowships that allow them to work on specific projects of interest alongside BIOS scientists in both field and laboratory settings.

Every hurricane season, from June 1 through November 30, we’re reminded that hurricanes are a force to be reckoned with, particularly when they make landfall in densely populated areas like Bermuda. In the wake of such a storm, local governments, businesses, homeowners and—of course—insurance companies are left trying to assess the damage and assign a final price tag to recovery and rebuilding efforts. Rick Murnane, Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI) Project Manager and Senior Research Scientist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), recently published a study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that may serve as an important tool in streamlining these efforts.

In a nod to the value of crowdsourcing as an effective forecasting method, the Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI2.0) announces the start of its seasonal forecast competition, in which participants can win up to $5000.

Source: RPI2.0

Between April 1, 2011 and April 1, 2012, a total of 622 babies were born at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.  The wellbeing of these babies and their mothers is of great importance to the health and vibrancy of the local community. To this end, Laval University’s Atlantis Mobile Laboratories, stationed at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) and supported by a grant from the Lepercq Foundation, is facilitating a National Maternal Nutrition Survey to assess the nutritional status and needs of pregnant women in Bermuda.

Adding to its already-distinguished staff, the Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI2.0) recently welcomed Dr. Mark Guishard as its new Science Program Manager. RPI2.0— part of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS)—works to create effective and efficient dialogue between scientists and (re)insurers involved in catastrophic risk by funding and showcasing academic research relevant to the (re)insurance industry and assisting in translating science into applications for the industry.

In some high-risk areas, ocean warming and climate change threaten the insurability of catastrophe risk. This is one of the conclusions of a research report issued today by the Climate Risks and Insurance working group of international insurance think tank, The Geneva Association.

In March of this year, the newly christened Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI) 2.0 hosted a workshop on the medium-term outlook for the frequency of hurricane landfalls in the RMS v11.0 risk model. According to this model, the computed risk for hurricanes over the medium-term (next 5 years) increased more than 100% in some regions, which forces insurance companies to hold more capital. This has direct consequences for Bermuda’s (re)insurance industry.