John is fascinated by dependencies (links) between severe weather events, such as windstorms and flooding, and their impact on infrastructure (e.g. houses, rail, road). He is a Reader at Loughborough University in Natural Hazard Risk. Since working for Zurich Insurance (2008-2010) as a catastrophe modeller, John has worked with the insurance sector, illustratively publishing a ‘Practitioner’s Guide’ to catastrophe modelling with industry colleagues (e.g., AIR, Aon, Willis, SCOR, JBA, Impact Forecasting, Lloyd’s).

John has published 45 articles, which in addition to inland flooding and wind include the perils of landslide, earthquake, cold, snow and crop failure. These have been cited >1,400 times. He is an Executive Editor of the journal Geoscience Communication whose ambition is foster better use and understanding of geoscience.

Currently (2021-2024) John is a UKRI Knowledge Exchange Fellow, working with the insurance sector and infrastructure providers. Part of this is a placement in the Bank of England (PRA) translating his work, including that recently with Dr Hannah Bloomfield of CGFI, on UK extremes into policy and regulatory practice. So far, this has been reported in a Bank Underground blog and used to modify the Bank’s General Insurance Stress Tests 2022.