Within a week of launching we now have 56 people on this list. Thank you.

Over the last week the working groups (below) have continued to define the scope and boundary conditions of the project, and connected with new people about what we’re doing.

And describing what we are doing many dozens of times has helped us create some clearer descriptions. Our current evolving introduction is:

“Icebreaker One is an initiative to develop an Open Environmental Risk Standard that will radically increase the accessibility of data required to address environmental risks.

Moving from a systemically uninsurable future
to a systemically investable present

It is not a technology-led initiative—our focus is to join up use-cases by creating the enabling conditions for automated data sharing.

To do so, we will address business models, product innovation, policy, processes, licensing, technology and communications practices to help enable organisations in the public and private sectors to collaborate at-scale.

We believe there are substantial issues around reliable data sharing that, if addressed, could create a step-change in the ability for domain experts to affect change. These include, but are not limited to:

  • insurance
  • risk modelling
  • hazards
  • disaster risk reduction
  • resilience
  • reconstruction
  • preparedness
  • mitigation
  • sustainability
  • science

We are exploring specific use-cases, such as applications around physical infrastructure, or the potential to create pre-event investment instead of post-reconstruction insurance products, hazard quantification, as well as identifying foundational supporting data, licensing frameworks, guiding principles for policy development.”

One guiding principle that has emerged that we believe fundamental to unlocking the power of the web of data to solve problems is:

 Design for search; license for use 

This means recommending that people enable meta-data about their data be made available in a manner that can be automatically discovered.

This meta-data should also contain machine descriptions of the data-as-a-product with usage and granular licensing terms such that it is possible for automatic discovery, licensing, payment and use.  This approach unlocks the ability for usage across the data spectrum, including open data and shared data.

We are holding a stakeholder workshop in London on 10th April to explore and articulate user needs, use-cases, challenges and opportunities. This interactive, hands-on 3 hour session will shape a vision for the kinds of products, services and innovations that IB1 could enable.

ACTIONS

1. Please let us know if you would like to attend. We are seeking diverse stakeholders with expertise in:

  • risk modelling
  • designing financial instruments
  • data licensing legal frameworks
  • insurance industry data and models
  • infrastructure projects
  • geospatial data

2. Please let us know who else should be speaking with (and introduce us if possible)?