While 2004 was the year of the tsunami, and 2005 the year of Katrina, 2007 is undoubtedly proving to be the year of the flood. Biblical scale flooding has inundated parts of China, while much of Bangladesh and northern India has been swamped by the worst floods in half a century. Even here in the UK, unprecedented summer rains have led to the most serious flooding in recent times.

This really shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, however, because – as we report in Hazard & Risk Science Review 2007 – climate scientists have recently presented evidence that the world has already become wetter, and is predicted to become wetter still. Extracting such information from the academic arena, and making it available, in a digestible form, to the re/insurance industry, is the primary purpose of the Review. This, we hope, will improve awareness and understanding, within the industry, of natural catastrophes and the processes that underpin them, limit the number of shocks and surprises arising from hazardous events, and help to drive more informed business decisions on a day-to-day basis.

Professor Bill McGuire
Director of the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre,
Author of the Hazard & Risk Science Review