August 20, 2010
AIR’s George Davis and Stacey Gotham describe how scoring, whether of individual locations or whole portfolios, provides quick insight into the uncertainty in modeled losses.
August 16, 2010
Six months after the magnitude 8.8 Concepción earthquake caused an estimated USD $5.5-8.6 billion of insured losses in Chile, Dr. Bingming Shen-Tu, Principal Scientist, Seismology, and Dr. Mehrdad Mahdyiar, Director of Earthquake Hazard for AIR’s Research and Modeling Group examine how the February event may have affected earthquake risk in this volatile area.
August 16, 2010
AIR Principal Engineer Dr. Vineet Jain looks at the evidence of the effects of wind duration on property damage, and explains how AIR models it.
July 19, 2010
The goal of any model is to approximate reality as closely as possible. On recently published wind profile formulation offers added versatility, which means that it can well represent not just the "typical" hurricane, but atypical ones as well.
July 19, 2010
Part and parcel of understanding catastrophe modeling results—and hence a company’s catastrophe risk profile—is an understanding of the uncertainties and sensitivities associated with the modeling process. Because uncertainty is a factor in both the development of catastrophe models and in the data input by model users, companies that want to fully comprehend the financial impact of catastrophes on their books of business should test the sensitivity of different inputs and assumptions.
July 18, 2010
AIR recently completed a study to model flood risk on the Lower Green River Valley in light of new operational rules on the Howard Hanson Dam. Using the hydraulic model that will be implemented in the AIR U.S. Flood Model currently under development, Dr. Yizhong Qu (AIR Senior Scientist, Hydrology) and Dr. Abebe Jemberie (Research Engineer) assess the potential flood extent and damage to properties.
June 16, 2010
June 1 marked the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season. In this article, Dr. Peter Dailey, Assistant Vice President & Director, Atmospheric Science, discusses the factors that influence Atlantic tropical cyclone activity and takes a look at what the forecasters are saying.
June 15, 2010
In this article, AIR Principal Research Analyst Nita Madhav describes the course of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic to date; explains why, according to epidemiologists’ best understanding, the pandemic has been less severe than expected; and presents several “what if” scenarios to explore outcomes had the pandemic had different characteristics.
June 15, 2010
AIR Worldwide has long dominanted the market for catastrophe risk modeling and analytical services related to both the issuance and portfolio management of insurance-linked securities. In this article, AIR principal engineer Dr. Guillermo Franco, provides insight into new techniques for reducing basis risk associated with parametric cat bonds. His research will be published in the November issue of the peer-reviewed journal "Earthquake Spectra."
May 27, 2010
North Atlantic hurricane season officially begins on June 1, and with seas 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the possibility of a tropical storm or hurricane on top of this oil spill becomes very real. Here we address the possible interactions between oil at sea and hurricanes, as well as indications of what this might mean to wildlife, ecosystems, business, and insurance interests.