Leveraging physics-based ground motion simulations for portfolio risk — a poster at RIAGE 2026

I presented a poster at the inaugural RIAGE (Re)Insurance-Academia Global Earthquake Workshop at UCL. This was a unique mix of catastrophe modelers, underwriters, and earthquake scientists sat together to share recent developments and future paths.

The poster presents a framework for integrating physics-based ground motion simulations into regional seismic risk workflows — with Vancouver’s tall building portfolio under an M9 Cascadia subduction zone scenario as the test case.

Tall buildings represent just 1.4% of the region’s building stock but nearly 14% of its total replacement value. Getting accurate hazard estimates for this exposure matters for insurers, for city planners, and for the people who live in these buildings.

The poster outlines three pathways of increasing fidelity for connecting physics-based hazard estimates to portfolio loss metrics, and points toward future work benchmarking their outputs against each other.