The second week of May has been designated Hurricane Preparedness Week by the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Although the week is typically dedicated to increasing public awareness, particularly for homeowners, this is also a good time to ensure that your organization is prepared. “Determine your Risk” and “Assemble Disaster Supplies” are two of NHC’s hurricane season preparation tips that apply to homeowners and insurance companies alike, and AIR’s Catalog Viewer can help with both. Catalog Viewer, our real-time risk, web-based analytics platform, helps you understand how hurricanes can impact your portfolio so that you can focus on the areas that are most at risk.
Let us introduce Palmetto Atlantic Insurance, a fictional insurance company in South Carolina. We will use them to illustrate the real benefits of using Catalog Viewer to prepare for this upcoming hurricane season.
Determine Your Risk
Palmetto Atlantic Insurance is using National Hurricane Preparedness Week as a good time to assess the risk to their portfolio across the State of South Carolina prior to the start of the season. They know that doing this now will go a long way toward being prepared later, when there’s a storm on the way, especially after the record-setting 2020 hurricane season.
To begin, they create a spatial filter to cover the entire state, including the coast, and overlay the United States 10K WSST Catalog. They are looking to see what their biggest risk is when it comes to major hurricanes, so they adjust the Storm filter to only account for Category 5 storms that make landfall in South Carolina. This filter yields 22 independent events they can further analyze with hourly points and intensity footprints for both storm surge and wind speed. The footprints help Palmetto Atlantic visualize the potential impact that a Category 5 hurricane could have on the state, especially for their exposures farther inland.
Assemble Disaster Supplies
Another theme of Hurricane Preparedness Week is assembling your disaster supplies. For Palmetto Atlantic Insurance, this includes having Catalog Viewer at hand. Palmetto Atlantic knows that they are prepared for the upcoming hurricane season because of Catalog Viewer’s real-time functionality. Real-time analytics are important when tracking how your impact is changing as the storm progresses.
Palmetto Atlantic sees that Hurricane Carolina (a fictional hurricane) is approaching the southeastern coast of the United States and the latest advisory from NHC is cause for concern. Luckily, they had the foresight to subscribe to AIR’s ALERT™ service, which provides them with SSEs for the approaching storm forecast to make landfall. These event IDs can be viewed in Catalog Viewer instantly, enabling Palmetto Atlantic Insurance to do their own analysis to get an even better sense of their risk.
To start, they add the latest cone of uncertainty to the map layers and using Catalog Viewer’s wide range of filtering tools, add three spatial filters: one small circle filter at the current location of Hurricane Carolina, one polygon filter covering the entirety of South Carolina, and one large circle filter further along the cone of uncertainty. Using the spatial filter at the hurricane’s current location, Palmetto Atlantic applies a Filter Set with ranges of central pressure, forward speed, and wind speed that have been adjusted to reflect the current observed conditions of Hurricane Carolina.
With this filter set, they find seven SSEs that follow the cone of uncertainty through South Carolina and toggle on hourly points to see the meteorological data of each SSE and get a better sense of what this might mean for the approaching hurricane. They also toggle on the wind and storm surge intensity footprints to see the potential impact on South Carolina. They then export these events and footprints into Touchstone® to see what their losses would be based on their initial query from Catalog Viewer. After all this, Palmetto Atlantic Insurance is confident that they have everything in place to ensure they’re prepared for the 2021 hurricane season.
Be Prepared
Catalog Viewer lets you make quicker business decisions with its real-time analytics by letting you instantly access AIR’s stochastic catalogs, real-time data feeds, and intensity footprints. Instantaneous visualization of AIR’s hurricane models helps you identify events that share important characteristics with current storms so that you can understand the broad range of impacts possible as a hurricane approaches land.
Not in the United States but still want to be prepared for hurricane season? Catalog Viewer now includes catalogs across the globe, spanning the western Pacific, Caribbean, and Atlantic basins. So, whether you want to track a hurricane approaching Japan, Florida, or an island in the Caribbean, AIR’s stochastic catalogs can help. Coming this summer, you’ll be able to see each storm’s industry loss directly in Catalog Viewer, saving you time and allowing you to make even quicker business decisions. Don’t be caught off guard this season—make sure you’re prepared using Catalog Viewer to help you determine your hurricane risk.
Evaluate your real-time risk with Catalog Viewer
