Understanding risk through observation, analysis & human behavior.
The Risk and Policy Institute explores approaches to disaster avoidance, preparedness, response, recovery, reconstruction, and resilience — integrating technical analysis, social convention, and the way people actually behave under uncertainty.
Our Mission
Risk is never one discipline's problem.
We study how the built environment, the natural world, technology, and human decisions collide to produce — or prevent — disaster. Our work spans the entire lifecycle of an extreme event, from the choices that avoid it to the systems that help communities recover and endure.
The Disaster Continuum
Our Framework
Disaster risk & decision analysis
We connect the metrics that describe a disaster, the levers available to act on it, and the objectives that define success — all under real risks and uncertainties. Outcomes feed back to refine the metrics, so the framework keeps the whole continuum in view and investments can be judged against what actually matters.
Explore a scenario
Choose a hazard to see how the framework plays out — the metrics we'd track, the levers we'd pull, and the objectives they serve.
Metrics what we measure
Levers what we can do
Objectives what success is
Focus Areas
Four lenses on a single question
Our research is organized around four interconnected subject areas. Select one to see what it covers.
Technology & Risk
How infrastructure, technology, and destruction intersect across intentional, unintentional, and natural extreme events.
Risk & the Environment
Climate change, sustainable energy and agriculture, industrial greening, and market-based environmental solutions.
Education & Risk
Education as a foundational component of nearly every policy challenge — from poverty reduction to economic development.
Risk, Response & Resilience
How organizations and governments prepare for, mitigate, and recover from disaster with integrated, evidence-based approaches.
Our Projects
Research in the field
Applied studies that put the Institute's focus areas to work on concrete, high-stakes questions of public risk and policy.
Hazardous Facilities
Rancho LPG Siting
A study of the disputed San Pedro butane storage facility — how risk management differs for planned versus existing hazardous sites, and the siting of aboveground LPG storage away from population centers.
Read moreCommunity Vulnerability
San Pedro & Wilmington Vulnerability Assessment
A place-based assessment and analysis of the layered hazards facing the San Pedro and Wilmington communities of the Los Angeles Harbor area.
Read morePublic Safety
School Shooting Project
Research into the patterns, precursors, and prevention of school shootings, and the policy responses intended to reduce their frequency and severity.
Read moreIndustrial Hazard Mapping
U.S. Ammonia Storage Facilities
Mapping ammonia storage facilities across the United States alongside their maximum concern zones — the areas that would be affected in a worst-case release.
Read moreScience Communication
Earth Sciences Communication Initiative
A collaborative effort with USC, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Annenberg School, and the Civic Center on Religion and Society to reframe climate communication and preservation.
Read moreResearch Library
A curated toolkit for risk researchers
The Institute maintains an annotated directory of the tools, datasets, and interactive maps we rely on — and recommend — for rigorous, reproducible risk analysis.
Tools & Readings
Climate snapshots, statistical and computational resources, image forensics, web archiving, safety-data-sheet creation, and foundational readings for working in uncertainty.
9 curated toolsData
Census extraction, the Global Terrorism and TEVUS databases, Harvard Dataverse, ProPublica, environmental right-to-know data, public-health statistics, and global economic datasets.
24 data sourcesMaps
Live and analytical maps — air pollution, FEMA flood zones, drought, marine and air traffic, climate projections, coastal barriers, and hazard-and-emergency preparedness.
22 interactive mapsOur Approach
The ideas that guide our work
Decisive historical changes do not come from great wars… it is enough that the heart of man incline its sensitive crown.
Science through its physical and technological consequences is now determining the relations which human beings, severally and in groups, sustain to one another.
The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
Independent research, led by practitioners.
The Risk and Policy Institute brings together researchers who work at the intersection of policy analysis, risk management, insurance, and quantitative modeling. We publish independent studies, curate research resources, and advise on the hardest problems in public risk.
The Institute is the research division of InsureTech, Inc.
Carl Southwell
Carl works across policy and risk analysis, insurance, quantitative modeling, and actuarial science. He holds a doctorate in Policy, Planning, and Development from USC and an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago.
Contact
Start a conversation
Whether you're a public agency, a fellow researcher, or a journalist working on a risk or policy story, we'd like to hear from you. Send a note and we'll respond directly.