In this session, James McIlwaine uses his experience as the lead actuarial developer of the Insurance Development Forum (IDF)/Oasis Risk Explorer to explore how open-access data and spatial sampling can be used to build simple catastrophe models. He will also look at how free-to-use tools can be used to close the protection gap in low and middle-income countries. He will cover the basic components of catastrophe models and how they’re set up, before introducing what parametric insurance is and why it’s useful. Additionally, he will provide a live demo of the tool and a few of its uses. The Risk Explorer is a free, online, open-source risk modelling platform designed to educate non-expert users in the basic components of catastrophe modelling and parametric insurance. The tool is able to model worldwide tropical cyclone risk as well as a number of other perils.