Innovative Research on Wildfire Risk and Modeling Fire Contagion: Winners of the 2023 and 2024 Variance Prizes Announced
The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) is proud to announce the winners of the Variance Prize for 2023 and 2024. The Variance Prize is awarded to papers published in Variance that demonstrate original thinking and research in property-casualty actuarial science.
The 2023 award-winning paper is “Random Forests for Wildfire Insurance Applications.” “We are very pleased to award the 2023 Variance Prize to Roba Bairakdar, Mathieu Boudreault, and Melina Mailhot for their paper,” said Variance Co-Editor Avraham Adler. “The paper is a prime example of not only fine actuarial research, but also how the actuarial profession continues to evolve as it has done for the past 200 years. Marrying advances in machine-learning techniques with actuarial theory has ramifications not only for wildfire evaluation, but for all the perils we consider. No extra consideration was given for the pun in the paper’s title!”
The 2024 award-winning paper is “Modeling of Fire Contagion in Farms Insurance.” “It is an honor to award Jean-Philippe Boucher, Andra Crainic, Alexandre LeBlanc, and Vincent Masse the 2024 Variance Prize for this work,” continued Mr. Adler. “Explicitly modeling a form of fire propagation allows for a more accurate collection of potential results and should provide both insurer and insured with a more complete understanding of the risks than was possible in prior decades. Given the combinatorial nature of this problem, there is plenty of opportunity for further research as well.”
Co-author Andra Crainic will lead a presentation of the 2024 prize-winning paper at the CAS Annual Meeting on November 11, 2025, held in Austin, Texas. The session will begin at 11:15am CT.
Since the 2007 launch of Variance, the peer-reviewed journal of the CAS, the Variance Editorial Board has recognized the best works published over the course of a year. The winners of the 2023 and 2024 prizes now join a collection of impactful works that tracks with the continual and rapid innovation in property-casualty actuarial science.
“Together, these papers embody the mission of Variance,” said Variance Editor-in-Chief Peng Shi, “to publish original research in nonlife actuarial science that blends theoretical rigor with practical relevance. [They] demonstrate how cutting-edge methods can advance actuarial practice. Both papers are truly deserving of the Variance Prize, an award established by the CAS to recognize outstanding contributions that bridge actuarial research and practice.”
Learn more about Variance and how to submit your works to the journal. Winners of previous Variance Prizes are available online.
