C.A.R. Dealings
New Deputy Chair in Hot Seat
Projects near and far continue to engage Cambridge Architectural Research, of
which Helen is now Deputy Chair. At the Royal Institution in October, Helen kicked off a
series of twelve one-day workshops on the subject of Sustainability in Housing
Refurbishment, organised by the Building Research Establishment.
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Venturi-effects assist rooftop
ventilation
Take me to your lieder
Strange apparitions on the roof of a secondary college, somewhere near Vienna...
Helen and colleagues inspect a prototype installation for the innovative NAVAIR
ventilation system.
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French project revives Helen’s
interest in caves
DEMULOG Project
Demulog is a European project on ‘Logement pour les démunis’.
Collaboration with Finnish, French and Belgian teams to design low-cost, low-energy houses
fortunately includes socio-cultural research. Here, investigation of local drinking habits
in the Côte-Rotie area, France.
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Ph.D. Supervisor
Welcome to Lin Hao. Helen is supervising his PhD thesis on sustainable office
buildings for Beijing. |
Dot.Bombed
Internet business follows many others into history
Andrew’s brave new internet venture finally had the plug pulled at the
start of the year.
RiskCentric is dead...
RiskCentric.com was intended to provide online catastrophe information, news and
market analysis, together with a data exchange for reinsurance transactions.
...long live RMS.com
All however was not lost. Risk Management Solutions launched a much less
ambitious website offering documentation and catastrophe event response, which has been
popular with clients. And may one day provide a platform for some pretty neat e-commerce
ideas...
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Most Wanted
While working on a project for a client
analysing terrorism risk, Andrew left his laptop at the security check-in at an airport in
New York. The content - terrorist scenarios - was so suspicious that the FBI interviewed
him for 40 minutes before impounding the laptop and requiring RMS to sign an affidavit
before release.
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Options Open
New Generation Whole Life Costing
C.A.R.’s work continues under the Partners in Innovation
programme (government funding from the DTI).
Financial Modelling
Now we are tackling the application of financial modelling
techniques such as options theory to decision making in the buildings business. Interested
parties include the National Trust, developer AMEC, Bennetts Architects.and Stonebridge
Housing Action Trust. Rumours are unfounded that we are seeking help from garden designers
to add a hedge fund analysis module. |
 Andrew surveys
damage to a Maharajah’s palace damaged in the Gujurat Earthquake
Earthquake in India
RMS Field Survey
A massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake ripped through Gujurat State on 26 January,
causing 18,000 deaths and destroying a prosperous region. Factories were hit by intensity
X shaking. A field survey derived the lessons from the event.
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Ground zero at World Trade Center on 31
Oct: 6 weeks after the disaster, the ruins still smoulder.
World Trade Center Disaster
Human and economic tragedy rewrites the risk rule book
The disaster of 11 September will never be forgotten by anyone who lived through
it. RMS clients were based in the building so the tragedy had a personal dimension.
Rapid Analysis
It soon became apparent that this was also a financial loss exceeding any other
type of catastrophe. RMS produced an analysis and a first estimate of the loss in ten
days. Andrew visited the site and carried out a damage survey six weeks later.
Risk Management
The way insurance companies manage terrorism risk and other threats has been
changed by this event. Finding ways to assess and understand the risk will be a new
challenge for the insurance industry. |
