July 2014

As we all know, a Sharknado can be a powerful and deadly force of nature as the documentary shown last night on SyFy confirmed. From a life insurance and health insurance point of view, this peril is near the top of the list of worst possible scenarios. But what about from the property insurance angle, which many of our clients are concerned with?

There is an abundance of folklore regarding factors that may (or may not) protect a location from tornado activity. They go around rather than over hills, for example, or they’re disrupted by urban structures, or attracted to mobile home parks.

As Scott Stransky discussed in his recent post, May 20 was the one year anniversary of the massive EF-5 tornado that hit the city of Moore, Oklahoma. In response to that terrible event, the city has approved updates to its residential building codes that require new construction to withstand winds up to 135 mph.

In my previous post, I analyzed a simple account and presented the results in a few different ways to understand the role non-catastrophe losses play in the overall risk profile of that account. In this post, I’d like to take a closer look at some of the tools used to perform that analysis, specifically the ISO® data elements that are available in Touchstone®.

To blend or not to blend, that is the question. Let’s say you have two sets of model results for the same exposure—should you combine them?

For the last two years I have been reviewing journal articles for the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, and a few weeks ago I was honored by the Journal as Best Reviewer for the year 2014! The award was made during the society’s annual Environmental and Water Research Institute (EWRI) conference.

Gone are the days when analysts simply fed data into their catastrophe models and accepted the results at face value. Increasingly, model users expect to understand what goes on under the hood, and want to adjust the model machinery to modify results.

Whether inland or coastal, flood is a very complex hazard. No other natural hazard comes in as many varied forms, and few cause damage in so many different ways. The velocity of moving water can apply damaging forces to structures, scour and undermine their foundations, and slam them with large debris.

In catastrophe risk management, where estimates of property losses due to hurricane activity, for example, can easily escalate into the billions, rigorous uncertainty measures are absolutely critical.

We have been keeping a very close eye on Arthur, the first tropical storm of the Atlantic season this year, and will continue to do so until the threat it poses has subsided. We are not only monitoring meteorological developments—as with any such storm, the research team at AIR assembles data daily to determine whether the potential losses from the event will meet the criteria we have set for posting an ALERT. So far, Arthur hasn’t, but that could change.