Technological innovation and societal change bring about emerging risks that are large in scale and are radically transforming the risk environment. From climate change and pandemics, to cyber attacks and risks emanating from artificial intelligence, these risks and their complexity are amplified by increasing global interconnectedness. Within that context, the insurance industry is crucial in delivering the novel mitigation, adaptation, and risk transfer responses that are urgently needed. Furthermore, actuarial methods are valuable in providing improved modeling and forecasting techniques.

Contributions are invited for a special issue of the Annals of Actuarial Science, to feature research on ‘Mitigating emerging and large-scale risks’. With the recognition that the risk landscape is ever changing, this special issue focuses on the following emerging and large-scale risks, which are pressing at the time of the call for papers.

• Cyber risks: insurability of cyber and crypto risks; risk associated with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies; digital asset risks; internet of things (IoT) risks; risks arising from disruptions or failures of digital systems.
• Climate change and sustainability: climate and environmental risks; weather-related risks and natural hazards; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing; sustainable development and its impact on insurance and risk management.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) risks: generative AI and large language models (LLMs); model risks from deployment of AI/ML in actuarial practice; ethical considerations and societal impacts of AI/ML; governance of AI/ML in actuarial contexts.

To mitigate these risks, areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Risk identification, quantification, and forecasting as applied to any of the areas above.
• Adaptation and resilience strategies, including public-private partnerships (PPP) in disaster response and risk financing; blended finance approach for risk mitigation and reduction; regulatory frameworks for managing and mitigating emerging risks.
• Insurability and risk sharing, including centralized risk transfer and decentralized / peer-to-peer risk sharing; blockchain and smart contracts in decentralized models; capital market solutions such as insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds.

This special issue aims to capture leading academic thinking, industry applications, and regulatory frameworks in any of the fields above, provided that the contribution has a clear relevance to insurance and/or utilizes methods from actuarial science. As the nature of emerging and large-scale risks often requires a collaborative approach, we also welcome contributions that are relevant to insurance while making use of interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from diverse fields such as climate science, economics, finance, and computer science. We encourage submissions that offer novel insights, theoretical developments, empirical analyses, or case studies.

The Guest Editors of this special issue are:

• Séverine Arnold, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
• Alfred Chong, Heriot-Watt University, UK
• Daniël Linders, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Maochao Xu, Illinois State University, USA
• Wenjun Zhu, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Papers intended for the special issue may be submitted from 1 December 2024 to 30 September 2025. We expect the special issue to appear as a collection in March 2027, but all papers accepted for publication will be formally published as FirstView articles on an on-going basis.

Upon submission via ScholarOne, please indicate that your manuscript is intended for this special issue by selecting the appropriate option from the dropdown menu in the Special Issue section.

The journal’s usual submission instructions for original research and review articles and for software contributions apply. For further detail please see the journal’s information pages, or contact journals@actuaries.org.uk. Questions regarding the scope of the special issue can be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief, Andreas Tsanakas.