Nobel Peace Prize Winners Honor Catastrophe Model Pioneer Clark

Karen Clark, who developed the first hurricane catastrophe model, has been recognized by a climate change group that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Clark, president and chief executive officer of Karen Clark & Co. in Boston, has been honored with an award certificate for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize bestowed on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to the accompanying letter from R. K. Pachauri, IPCC Chairman, “We are providing a copy of this award only to those who have contributed substantially to the work of the IPCC over the years since the inception of the organization.”;

Clark first contributed to the work of the IPCC as a co-lead author for the Second Assessment Report published in 1995. Since that time, she has sponsored and supported scientific research on climate change and its potential impacts with respect to severe weather events.

“It’s a great honor to be associated with the IPCC, the 2007 co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and to be recognized as a valuable contributor to such an important body of scientific work,”; said Clark. “Climate change is clearly one of the most critical issues of our time and an area of vital ongoing scientific investigation.”;

On December 10, 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Clark is an internationally recognized expert in the field of catastrophe risk assessment and management. She developed the first hurricane catastrophe model and in 1987 founded the first catastrophe modeling company, Applied Insurance Research (AIR), which subsequently became AIR Worldwide Corp. after acquisition by Insurance Services office in 2002. She has spent 20 years working with meteorologists, seismologists, engineers and other experts to develop catastrophe models, and she has developed processes to benchmark catastrophe models for all types of natural hazards in 50 countries. Clark has led the development of software applications that are used globally as standard tools for catastrophe risk assessment and management.

Source: Karen Clark & Co.
www.karenclarkandco.com.