Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems - UNC Institute for the Environment

The UNC Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems (CoFiRES) is jointly housed in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and UNC’s Institute for the Environment. We focus on understanding the links between financial losses and drought, hurricanes and other extreme environmental events. By developing integrated models of natural, engineered, economic and financial systems, we provide better estimates of the likelihood and severity of environmentally-related financial risks. Our research includes:

Developing new financial instruments, such as index insurance, to help individuals, businesses and government agencies manage environmental financial risks.

Creating innovative risk management strategies to combat increasingly complex environmental challenges, using new and existing financial instruments in combination with infrastructure.

Providing those exposed to risk better planning paradigms for extreme environmental events, helping them improve their ability to manage the resulting financial risk.

Visit the CoFiRES website at Gillings School of Global Public Health