Aon's Research Forum
Academic & Industry Collaboration

Aon's Research Forum brings together our relationships under one banner to deliver a wealth of relevant academic research material and to help insurers and reinsurers enhance their understanding and management of risks. We combine world-class research with our industry-leading catastrophe modeling, actuarial analysis and broking expertise to create a more risk aware world.

Through our investment and coordination, our goal is to enable insurers and reinsurers, their clients, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to protect and grow their organizations in the face of natural hazards and socio-economic risks.

We were the first company in the (re)insurance industry to support and invest in academic research, recognizing how academia can work hand in hand with business to improve risk awareness and understanding. Since 1996 we have built strong links with leading institutions and organizations: 

• Ambiental - Ambiental is a leading flood risk assessment, surface water drainage and risk modelling consultancy that operates internationally and produces high detail flood risk data, flood hazard maps, perils risk data, flood modelling software and reports for insurance companies, the land and property sector, engineers, utilities and city council planning departments.
• Beijing Normal University: Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management - The Academy strives to be a national research base and talent center for disasters reduction, risk governance and emergency management in China.
• BMT - Australian based engineering company providing among others TUFLOW products as a suite of advanced numerical engines and supporting tools for simulating free-surface water flow for urban waterways, rivers, floodplains, estuaries and coastlines. The TUFLOW engines are technically superior and are industry leaders in solving all the necessary physical processes using 1D, 2D and 3D solutions.
• Bureau of Meteorology - The Bureau of Meteorology is Australia's national weather, climate and water agency.
• ClimAction - First established as a partnership in 2011 and incorporated in 2017, ClimAction is comprised of former Environment Canada employees with a passion for the environment and weather.
• ClimateWise - A global collaboration of leading insurers, facilitated by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, focused on reducing the risks of climate change.
• CSIRO - The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is the federal government agency for scientific research in Australia.
• Czech Technical University in Prague - Faculty of Information Technology – Faculty focusing on Computer Science, Computer Security, Web and Software Engineering and Data Science.
• Defence Academy of the UK - UK Ministry of Defence’s academy research body run by the University of Cranfield and King’s College London with focus mainly on military/security scientific development, among others the Computational Fluid Dynamics technology for blast modelling.
• Deltares - An independent, institute for applied research in the field of water, subsurface and infrastructure. Throughout the world, we work on smart solutions, innovations and applications for people, environment and society.
• European Severe Storms Laboratory - ESSL performs severe weather research and supports the research community by operating the European Severe Weather Database and co-organizing the European Conferences on Severe Storms.
• EuroTempest - Transforms weather forecasts and observations into the specific information required to make successful live risk management decisions.
• Fathom - Flood risk intelligence: Accurately predicting global flood risk is essential to our future.
• Global Earthquake Model - The GEM Foundation is a public-private partnership that drives a global collaborative effort in which science is applied to develop high-quality resources for transparent assessment of earthquake risk and to facilitate their application for risk management around the globe.
• HR Wallingford - World-leading analysis, advice and support in engineering and environmental hydraulics, and in the management of water and the water environment.
• ImageCat - ImageCat is a risk management innovation company supporting the global risk and catastrophe management needs of the insurance industry, governments, and NGOs.
• Indian Institute of Technology Madras - The department of civil engineering is actively involved in research on natural disasters such as earthquake, floods.
• Indian Institute of Technology Mandi - Newly formed IIT by the Govt of India with working groups on seismic hazard assessment.
• Institute for Advanced Study of Pavia - Learning and research centre.
• The International Seismological Centre (ISC) - The ISC was set up in 1964 with the assistance of UNESCO as a successor to the International Seismological Summary (ISS) to follow up the pioneering work of Prof. John Milne and Sir Harold Jeffreys in collecting, archiving and processing seismic station and network bulletins and preparing and distributing the definitive summary of world seismicity.
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology - The focus of the Regional Climate and Weather Hazards working group is integrated analysis of extreme weather and climate events, climate change, climate variability and risk assessment.
• Kyoto University - Division of Wind Resistant Structures - Wind-related disaster mitigation caused by tropical cyclones, tornadoes and other wind-borne phenomena.
• Lighthill Risk Network - A not-for-profit organization, which brings together scientific research worldwide, industry (initially Insurance), government and third party organizations in exchanging risk-related expertise.
• North-West University - Recognised as one of the best-managed and most innovative universities in South Africa.
• NTU Singapore - Institute of Catastrophe Risk Management - first multi-disciplinary catastrophe risk management research institute of its kind in Asia.
• Oasis Loss Modelling Framework - The Oasis Loss Modelling Framework provides an open source platform for developing, deploying and executing catastrophe models. It uses a full simulation engine and makes no restrictions on the modelling approach.
• Oscilmet - Oscilmet is an innovative, Australian-based IT company, specialising in the collation, analysis and interpretation of weather data. The company’s range of expertise includes predicting the probable impact boundaries of severe weather events and presenting this information real-time, in user-friendly formats.
• Risk Frontiers - World leader in quantitative natural hazards risk assessment and risk management supported by the Australian insurance community.
• Shanghai Typhoon Institute - Part of the China Meteorological Administration, its mission is to undertake basic and applied research related to tropical cyclones and is a base for training high-level professional personnel specialized in tropical cyclone science.
• Spurr Consulting - Leading global consultancy on earthquakes.
• Thornton Tomasetti Defence - Thornton Tomasetti provides engineering design, investigation and analysis services and also a Walair software which is used for CFD blast modelling.
• Tropical Storm Risk - Unrivalled accuracy in real time mapping and prediction of tropical cyclones worldwide.
• UCL Hazard Centre, University College London - Europe's leading multidisciplinary academic hazard research center, comprising geological hazards, meteorological hazards & seasonal forecasting, and disaster studies and management.
• University of East Anglia - The UEA is a research university and home of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
• University of Notre Dame - The Computational Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) at the University of Notre Dame is focused on developing cutting edge technologies to simulate wave and circulation environments in the coastal ocean and adjacent coastal floodplain.
• University of Strathclyde -Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering - in Scotland linking its research with industry.
• Yokohama National University - Yokohama National University is one of leading national universities in Japan. The cooperation focusing on typhoon simulations.
• URBARIS consortium - An innovative training network of universities and industry with focus on new challenges for urban engineering seismology, including low probability, high consequence earthquakes, induced seismicity, vulnerability and risk assessment.