About us

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The University of Pretoria Natural Hazard Centre, Africa amalgamates various communities and serves as a harbour of information for the engineering, mining, disaster management and insurance industries. The Centre’s network of associates have extensive skills in earthquake hazard modelling, mining catastrophe, flood, hail and other meteorological hazards and risks. The Centre can offer independent advice, opinion and analysis on all aspects of natural perils.
 

The Centre promotes research and consultancy into natural hazards and catastrophe modelling and makes relevant natural peril information more widely available to the insurance, engineering and mining communities. The Centre also provides expertise and research on natural hazards affecting South Africa and neighbouring countries, particularly seismic hazards. The Centre offers a wide range of engineering geophysics, seismology and statistical solutions that are based on numerical and computing techniques, data analysis and applied statistical methods. A particular strength of the Centre is its ability to provide solutions for limited and incomplete data sets, based on strict mathematical and statistical modelling procedures. These modelling procedures are, however, universal and can be applied to data ranging from natural hazards to the financial field. Typical solutions include hazard and risk maps, damage curves and Monte Carlo-generated synthetic catalogues.

 

Vision, Mission & Values

The Centre is committed to research and education. This commitment is achieved through the undertaking, publishing and promotion of research and the advancement of knowledge of natural hazards and risks through a wide range of research and commercial projects, publishing in accredited journals and the supervision of postgraduate students. The expertise of the Centre are supplemented through the collaboration with several academic University departments including the Insurance and Actuarial Science, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Geology as well as the Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology departments.

 

The aims of the Centre are:

  1. To expand significantly the opportunities of research in the field of Natural Hazards in Africa through fundamental research and publishing;
  2. To provide opportunities for researchers in the fields of Insurance and Actuarial Science, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Geophysics, Geology and Engineering Geology, as well as Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology;
  3. To promote the training of postgraduate students in research in the Natural Hazard field; and
  4. To provide research and development expertise for the insurance, reinsurance, loss adjustment, risk management and disaster management industries and research institutions as well as companies in the mining, construction and energy sectors.

 

 


 

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