The Centre for Disaster Protection has announced the launch of “Labs,” a new innovation platform engineered to accelerate practical, open-source solutions that help governments plan, finance, and respond to increasingly severe disasters. The international organisation also confirmed the appointment of disaster risk finance expert Conor Meenan to head the initiative.
The launch comes at a critical juncture as climate-induced disasters grow more frequent and costly, exposing a significant gap between technical risk modelling and the practical policy needs of vulnerable nations.
Disaster risk financing has traditionally been hindered by fragmented tools and highly technical barriers, leaving many finance ministries struggling to determine how to structure risk instruments effectively. Labs aims to bridge this divide by co-designing scalable, open-access tools alongside government decision-makers, tech experts, and field practitioners.
The platform’s initial 2026 portfolio of projects will focus on three urgent areas of exploration:
- Quantifying exposure: Devising tools to help sovereign states accurately measure their immediate financial exposure to catastrophic events.
- Refining parametric triggers: Designing reliable data triggers that automatically release funding during disasters, minimizing bureaucratic delays.
- Optimising finance structures: Creating frameworks that allow governments to evaluate and compare different combinations of insurance, reserves, and credit instruments.
Conor Meenan, the newly appointed Head of Labs, highlighted the operational hurdles that the platform is built to solve. “Countries face difficult questions about how to estimate the full financial cost of disasters, when funds should be triggered, and how to choose the right mix of financing instruments,” Meenan said. “While tools and knowledge exist, they are often fragmented or not designed for practical use in policy settings.”
The platform operates on three core principles: being bold enough to address the modern scale of climate crises, maintaining open-source access to all developed resources, and remaining strictly grounded in real-world policy constraints.
All tools, resources, and frameworks generated by Labs will be made freely available online to allow for rapid adaptation across different regional contexts and developing economies.
Daniel Clarke, Executive Director of the Centre for Disaster Protection, expressed confidence in the initiative’s trajectory for 2026 and beyond. “Labs will help accelerate the development of open, scalable tools that strengthen how countries plan and pay for disasters,” Clarke stated, reinforcing the Centre’s role in advancing structural innovation within the global climate and disaster finance architecture.
