The Laboratory for Insurance, Financial and Economic Research is dedicated to defining the hurricane threat to the economy. A key initiative is developing and maintaining the first publically funded catastrophe model to predict long-term wind damage and insured losses for residential properties and provide technical assistance to stakeholders that are at risk to hurricanes. This certified public model can also be used to quantify the economic benefits of hurricane mitigation. The research team includes experts specializing in finance, insurance, meteorology, engineering, computer science, actuarial science and statistics.