Who, When, and Where? Assessing Mortality Risk of Climate Change

The project is primarily managed by Dr. Han Li, Associate Professor at Centre for Actuarial Studies, Department of Economics of the University of Melbourne.

The project is associated with ongoing research focusing on results dissemination, knowledge exchange, and conference presentations.

Steering committee

Foundation: Zeying Peuillet and Adam Shao
University of Melbourne: Han Li and Rob Hyndman (Monash University)

Objectives

The primary objective of this project is to obtain a richer understanding of how mortality risk is affected by climate change. A cutting-edge Bayesian modelling approach will be proposed to estimate the non-linear relationship between mortality and temperature which allow to investigate the following important empirical questions:

• Where are the excess deaths? – Identify regions and communities that are particularly vulnerable.
• When do excess deaths occur? – Determine if mortality risk is greater in winter or summer and how this varies across different regions.
• Who are the excess deaths? – Quantify the extent to which excess deaths due to extreme weather impacts different age groups.

This project will be a pioneering study to quantify the mortality risk associated with climate change for insurance risk management.  The approach can also be used to assess the impact of climate change on morbidity based on prevalence and/or incidence rate. More importantly, the modelling framework will be applicable to mortality and morbidity experience of an insured population, to better understand the impact of climate on the insurance portfolio. 

The project outputs will be submitted for publication in leading international research journals, while also being presented at international conferences and seminars.