Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers,

As we (in Boston) look forward to longer days and warming temperatures, we welcome the opportunity to shed light on many topics of interest coming up in AIRCurrents in 2014.

This year, as we do every year, we will share some of the research our scientists and engineers have undertaken to update our existing models-such as the much-anticipated update to the AIR U.S. severe thunderstorm model-and to bring new ones to market. We've already introduced you to the game-changing AIR Inland Flood Model for the U.S., and we'll take a deeper dive into this model in 2014. The state-of-the-science update of our Canada earthquake model has created enormous buzz-and we will continue to help drive the discourse on Canadian earthquake risk in AIRCurrents and elsewhere.

Of course, AIRCurrents is not just about models. Touchstone, our next generation software platform, will feature a significantly expanded set of capabilities this year, including the ability to account for both cat and non-cat losses. If you haven't yet heard our vision for the future of Touchstone, we encourage you to watch this video.

We'll continue to provide you with our most popular regular features, such as our quarterly "Megadisaster" series, Modeling Fundamentals, and our anniversary articles that discuss and contextualize extraordinary catastrophes past. And as the need arises, we will be on the scene post-disaster to bring you the latest scientific insights gleaned, as we did for Sandy, the Moore, Oklahoma, EF-5 tornado, and other catastrophes. Last but not least, we'll continue our monthly "Did You Know?" series, offering a thought-provoking fact that we hope you find informative.

Our goal every month is to make AIRCurrents the best possible catastrophe modeling resource for you, and we encourage you to provide feedback by clicking the green speech bubble located at the top of each article. Let us know what you want to see more of and less of, what topics we could explore further, and what you'd like to learn about that we haven't covered.

As always, we appreciate the time and attention you devote to reading AIRCurrents. We like to think it is time well spent, and we hope you feel the same.

We wish you a productive and enlightening 2014,

The AIRCurrents Team