As a part of the process for producing the Climate and Society publication, Volume 2, the workshop will focus specifically on identifying and distilling key technical issues, rather than covering broader issues such as climate risk management strategies or how to implement index insurance as a tool to reduce poverty.

The announcement for the workshop is at the link below:
http://iri.columbia.edu/~deo/csp2/WorkshopAnnouncement.pdf

Below is a link to the draft table of contents for that volume.  If you are interested in connecting with any part of this process, please let me know. http://iri.columbia.edu/~deo/csp2/CSP2TOC-3.pdf

Short discussion papers on each topic will be distributed to participants in advance, serving to inform and educate participants, orient discussion, and to help inform the Climate and Society publication. Feedback on the papers from participants is encouraged. The papers and related background papers will be made available on the IRI website in advance (iri.columbia.edu/CSP).

Ten topic areas have been identified for discussion and a coordinator had been identified to work with co-authors and reviewers to distill central issues into a 2-3 page summary and presentation. 

Presentations will be focused on providing the current state of the art of the technology, how it is or could be used to support the scaling up of index insurance, and identifying priority actions and research areas.  Each has been allocated 35 minutes of time: 20 minutes for the
presentation of the topic and 15 minutes for open discussion.   The topics include Contract Design, Agricultural Systems Modeling, Water Resources Applications, Rainfall Simulation, Seasonal Forecasts, Spreading Risk Geographically, Climate Change/decadal scale, Remote Sensing - Vegetation, Remote Sensing - Rainfall, Games for Communicating Complex Information.

As part of the CSP2 process, there will be a writing workshop for available authors on the following day.  

The registration page with more information is at the link below:
http://iri.columbia.edu/events/indexinsurance_workshop