The impacts and reporting of events such as the heat wave of summer 2003, the floods of summer 2007, the non-arrival of a 'barbeque' summer in 2009 and the threat of drought in 2011 have all focused attention on climate change and the risks that it might pose. Whilst human related climate change in its general sense (global changes over timescale of decades to centuries) can be difficult to grasp, the increased likelihood of extreme weather events (such as those described above) is easier to understand and evoke an immediate response. The response to major events, such as large scale flooding, is almost always to demand action both to reduce the possibility of the event happening again and to minimise its impact if it does happen. When such events occur, awareness of and belief in climate change, is at its height, even though climate scientists will point out that any individual incident of this kind cannot be directly attributed to climate change. If forecasts are 'wrong', as was felt to be the case with the suggestion of a barbeque summer for 2009, then the climate scientists are mocked in the media and lose credibility. An unfortunate, casual choice of words, can result in a major lack of trust and increased scepticism about climate change generally. This highlights the aim of this study, which is to bring together researchers, government agencies and local authorities, private industry, representatives of the media and people interested in and affected by climate change, to explore how to improve communication and understanding. Our particular focus is on the concept of uncertainty and how this is expressed and understood by different people. The climate modelling community represent uncertainty using statistics and as you move through a process of trying to model the impacts of possible climate change, so layers of uncertainty are superimposed and identifying what is realistically likely becomes more difficult to express. This version of uncertainty is probably not the same as the one we use in our everyday lives; gut instinct, cultural and social norms will all affect how we view the risk of something happening and how we will respond to it. These perceptions of uncertainty will dictate how we assess risk in particular contexts and how far we are willing to change our behaviour and prepare for particular events. If we are to develop policies and strategies to deal effectively with the risks posed by climate change, then these very different ideas about what uncertainty is, and how it is communicated, need to be explored and efforts made to develop a vocabulary, or language, that is mutually intelligible. We intend to contribute to this process by developing real collaborative partnerships both within the research community (too often perhaps focusing on communicating with its particular peer group rather than more widely) and between the researchers and everyone else. The researchers involved in this project come from a wide range of disciplines, but all have an interest in uncertainty and climate change and its impacts. In order to tap into the view of a wide group of organisations and individuals, we intend to draw on the wide range of contacts already known to us, but also to set up a small steering group for the project (largely non-academic) who can help us to identify missing elements. As this is only a six month project, it is really only the start of a process, but we believe that it will help to build links and communication in the vital area of climate change and risk which lies at the heart of science in culture.

Humanitarian agencies are able to use weather (and other) forecasts to act in anticipation of humanitarian crises. For example, when a heatwave or hurricane is forecast, supplies can be moved into position early and emergency supplies positioned or pre-distributed. This reduces the overall impact and the cost of responding to the disaster. However, financing in advance of a disaster requires a high level of confidence in the forecast, to avoid the possibility of misallocated or wasted resources. Many forecasts are currently available but not all are accompanied by an assessment of the forecast quality. For example, it may be that the forecast is over-confident, predicting an event more times than it is actually observed, or it could be under confident, failing to predict events which do then occur. We propose to develop and demonstrate a general method of measuring and displaying the information content of forecasts, using a novel idea which is based on existing research and freely available data. This will allow humanitarian agencies to act confidently in anticipation of humanitarian crises when there is sufficient information in the forecast, and to implement forecast-based financing schemes such as insurance or anticipatory funding allocation only when there is known to be confidence that the scheme will be effective.

Since December 2006 four sets of UN Security Council sanctions have been imposed on Iran over its nuclear programme, with Tehran still yet to satisfy the international community that its intentions are solely peaceful. UN sanctions have been augmented by a series of unilateral sanctions regimes notably in the US and the EU. The various regimes target multiple economic sectors. However, while sanctions appear to be widely perceived as constituting a valuable tool for the international community to apply pressure on Iran to negotiate over its nuclear programme, the wide range and scope of the various regimes, and in many cases a lack of detailed guidance on implementation, mean that uncertainty can exist within industry regarding their implementation. Much attention has been focused on the banking sector in recent years as policy-makers have adapted tools initially designed to target the assets and money-laundering capabilities of terrorist organisations to meet the needs of non-proliferation sanctions. This focus on the banking sector has forced banks and financial institutions to enhance greatly their compliance capabilities and procedures. However, other financial service sectors have not been subject to similar attention and, consequently, have not developed similarly sophisticated compliance capabilities. The obligation to comply with sanctions extends to a range of insurance products and activities, especially where these relate to commerce. Implementation can be costly and complex and it can be difficult to determine whether compliance policies and procedures meet the challenges. In terms of reinsurance, for example, ensuring compliance on broad-based, multi-activity coverage has become an important challenge for insurers. The shipping industry has been dramatically affected due to the implications of the sanctions on protection and indemnity insurance coverage. Unusual measures have in some cases been adopted, for example by the government of Japan, which has extended sovereign insurance coverage to Japanese tankers affected by the EU oil embargo on Iran. In this context, the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS) at King's College London proposes to host a two-day themed workshop on Iran sanctions and the insurance industry. This workshop will bring together practitioners from major global insurance and reinsurance providers and brokers (compliance officers, etc), representatives from industries covered by relevant insurance policies (carriers, freight forwarders etc), policy-makers (UK, EU and US) and academia, for a frank discussion under the Chatham House rule. The workshop will have three principal aims: 1. to inform policy-makers on the challenges associated with the implementation of sanctions in the insurance industry; 2. to inform insurance industry participants on how to better implement insurance-related sanctions in practice; and 3. to explore the relationship between the challenges associated with the effective implementation of sanctions in the insurance industry and broader perspectives regarding the effectiveness of sanctions as a viable alternative to military force in addressing Iran's continued failure to comply with UN Security Council demands to suspend sensitive nuclear activities and to fully cooperate with international investigations. The focus on the insurance industry will be of great value in providing participants with an industry-specific, pan-regional perspective on the issues, ideally leading to enhanced understanding by industry of requirements and compliance mechanisms, and by policy makers of the practicalities of implementation. The workshop will also help to inform future policy-making in terms of the challenges and obstacles to the successful implementation of sanctions in the insurance industry.

Climate and environmental (CE) risks (CER) to our economy and society are accelerating. CER include climate-related physical risks such as floods, storms, or changing growing seasons; climate-related transition risks such as carbon pricing and climate litigation; and environmental risks such as biodiversity loss. It is now well accepted that CER can impact asset values across multiple sectors and pose a threat to the solvency of financial institutions (FIs). This can cause cascading effects with the potential to undermine financial stability. The adoption of CER analytics will ensure that CE risks can be properly measured, priced, and managed by individual FIs and across the financial system. This is also a necessary condition to ensure that capital is allocated by FIs towards technologies, infrastructure, and business models that lower CER, which are also those required to deliver the net zero carbon transition, climate resilience, and sustainable development. These twin tracks - greening finance and financing green - are both enabled by CER analytics being appropriately used by FIs. The UK is a world-leader in Green Finance (GF). UK FIs have played a key role in GF innovation. Yet, despite these advances and leadership in almost every aspect of GF, UK FIs cannot secure the data and analytics needed to properly measure and manage their exposures to CER. While the last decade has seen the exponential growth of CE data, as well as improved analytics and methods, often produced by world-leading UK science, the vast majority of this has not found its way into FI decision-making. Our vision for CERAF is to establish a new national centre to resolve this disconnect. CERAF aims to enable a step-change in the provision and accessibility of data, analytics, and guidance and accelerate the integration of CER into products and decisions by FIs to manage CER risks and drive efficient and sustainable investment decisions, thereby delivering the following impacts: - Enhance the solvency of individual FIs in the UK and globally and so contribute to the resilience of the global financial system as a whole for all, as well the efficient pricing and reallocation of capital away from assets at risk to those that are more resilient. - Underpin the development and the growth of UK GF-related products and services. - Enable a vibrant ecosystem of UK enterprises providing CER analytics and realise the opportunity for UK plc of being a world-leader in the creation and provision of CER services. Our vision is that CERAF will be the nucleus of a new national centre established to deliver world-leading research, information, and innovation to systematically accelerate the adoption and use of CER data and analytics by FIs and to unlock opportunities for the UK to lead internationally in delivering CER services to support advancements in greening finance and financing green globally It aims to overcome the following barriers: 1) Making existing data on hazards, vulnerabilities, and exposures more accessible and useable for FIs, with clearly communicated confidence and with analytics that does not yet exist being secured; 2) Consistency and standards to reduce fragmentation, facilitate innovative products and enable the efficient flow and use of data; 3) Assurance and suitability are needed to understand which CER analytics are best suited for particular uses and provide transparency into underlying data and methodologies, so that CER analytics can be trusted and used; 4) Unlocking innovation through supporting FIs to test new approaches in a lower-risk way; and 5) Building capability, knowledge, and skills within FIs to analyse and interpret CER data. Resolving these barriers is a necessary condition for repricing capital and avoiding its misallocation, and achieving the UK's ambitions on GF.