January 13, 2010
Since the early 1990’s, AIR has conducted research exploring the relationship between elevated ocean temperatures and tropical cyclone activity. In 2007, AIR introduced in its U.S. hurricane model an alternative view of U.S. hurricane risk—one conditioned on those years since 1900 with warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Three years later, Dr. Peter S. Dailey, AIR Director of Atmospheric Science, takes a step back to discuss the relative performance of the standard and so-called WSST catalogs thus far.
January 12, 2010
This article first appeared in the December issue of ISO Review, ISO’s quarterly publication for insurance executives and management. In it, AER’s Dr. Ross Hoffman, AIR’s Dr. Peter Dailey and ISO’s Michael Murray discuss the importance of proactive risk management in the face of an uncertain future global climate.
January 12, 2010
Dr John E. Alarcon, Research Associate in AIR’s London Office, co-led the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team’s (EEFIT) mission after the M7.6 earthquake that occurred off the coast of Sumatra last September. In this article, Dr. Alarcon recounts the event and presents some preliminary findings on the distribution of damage in the city of Padang and surrounding region.
December 09, 2009
Ten years ago this December Europe was subjected to three fiercely intense storms in rapid succession, Anatol, which arrived on December 3rd, Lothar, which struck on December 26th, and Martin, which immediately followed Lothar on December 27th. Together the storms brought much of Europe to a halt, killed more than 160 people, wreaked widespread damage and inflicted catastrophic insured losses of more than ten billion Euros (1999). In this article, Managing Director of AIR’s Munich operations, Yörn Tatge, describes the events, notes their impact on the insurance industry and addresses the continuing importance of European winter storms.
December 08, 2009
November 30 marked the official end of the Atlantic hurricane season. With nine named storms, including three hurricanes, and no U.S. landfalling hurricanes, this season was the second quietest since 1995, the year the present period of above-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) began. This year’s relative inactivity stands in sharp contrast to the 2008 season, during which Hurricanes Dolly, Gustav, and Ike battered the Gulf Coast, causing well over 10 billion USD in insured losses. With no U.S. landfalling hurricanes in 2009, but a near miss in the Northeast, 2009 reminds us yet again of the dramatic short term variability in hurricane landfalls, regardless of whether SSTs are above or below average.
November 12, 2009
It is widely reported that seven of the top ten historical hurricane losses in the United States occurred in 2004 and 2005, with Hurricane Ike in 2008 claiming its place among the top five. The rankings are based on reported insured losses at the time the events took place—not on losses trended to today’s dollars and today’s exposures. Thus, while these statistics are true from the narrow perspective of actual contemporaneous insured loss, they are quite misleading. The number and value of properties have increased dramatically in the past century, well beyond the rate of inflation. The more interesting question, then, is what would be the ranking were these historical hurricanes to recur today.
November 10, 2009
This article is the second in a series on green building that first appeared on ISOPro, ISO’s website designed to share information with underwriters, risk managers, and loss control personnel interested in managing property risk. In this article, Xactware Assistant Vice President Mike Fulton and AIR Senior Construction Specialist Rob Caron define "green building" and discuss its growing role in the construction industry. The article was motivated by the need to inform insurance professionals about the growing green building trend and to focus research into how best to incorporate the various levels of green building options into 360Value®, ISO’s property valuation solution developed by AIR and XactWare.
November 10, 2009
For the past two years, AIR Worldwide has been supporting research at Florida International University’s International Hurricane Research Center into the effects of hurricane-force winds on structures. The work has been conducted using a hurricane simulator called the “Wall of Wind." AIR principal engineer Dr. Vineet Kumar Jain attended a Workshop on the Wall of Wind research effort earlier this year. In this article he describes the facility, lays out the main lines of research planned for it, and discusses some early findings.
October 13, 2009
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the October 17, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake, the most destructive in northern California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Dr. Mehrdad Mahdyiar, AIR Director of Earthquake Hazard, and Dr. Paolo Bazzurro, AIR Principal Engineer and Director of Engineering Analysis and Research, discuss some noteworthy characteristics of the event and explore how the lessons learned in the past twenty years have shaped our current approach to earthquake loss estimation.
October 13, 2009
In 2009, catastrophe losses in the United States are once again dominated by those from severe thunderstorms. As of October 1, total aggregate insured losses for the peril are more than $9 billion—nearly 30% higher than the average for January to September from 2000 to 2008. This year’s higher-than-average losses are surprising from a meteorological perspective given that 2009 has been slightly below average in terms of activity; numbers of tornado, hail and straight-line wind events have all fallen below normal. In the following article, principal scientist Dr. Tim Doggett and senior engineer Dr. Shiraj Khan comment on this year’s severe thunderstorm activity and compare it to other recent seasons.