Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) announced the availability of Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics, a new service for corporations and emergency management agencies to help them better manage and assess their risk from natural catastrophes. AIR’s new climate risk service addresses the uncertainty in data reported in real time by incorporating a wide range of catastrophe loss scenarios, including low-probability but high-impact outcomes, for improved planning and decision making. Companies and emergency management agencies can now receive a real-time view of risk specific to the vulnerabilities of a unique set of assets, such as an industrial facility, a set of retail locations, or an entire region.
“AIR developed Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics in direct response to a need expressed by our clients for a customizable solution that quantifies the risk of storm activity prior to landfall and assesses what the resulting physical and financial impacts could be to their properties,” said Dr. Peter Dailey, vice president and director of atmospheric science at AIR Worldwide. “By combining Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics with AIR’s Catastrophe Risk Engineering (CRE) services, AIR provides an end-to-end solution, from site-specific analysis for modeling the vulnerabilities of assets to real-time climate risk services that help risk managers and agencies better prepare for natural catastrophes. This is a significant improvement over other solutions that look only at real-time hazard data. Decisions can now be made based on the physical and financial risk to the assets under consideration.”
The core technology behind Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics is ClimateCast®, a web-based application that tracks and assesses industrywide risk from active tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin, including the potential for producing losses to onshore and offshore assets in the United States and the Gulf of Mexico. ClimateCast is updated four times daily and assimilates data from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and other meteorological organizations around the world. The application tracks storm activity beginning June 1 and updates continually throughout the hurricane season. ClimateCast can be customized using AIR’s CRE services to translate the real-time view of hazard into a real-time view of risk, meeting the specific needs of individual risk managers.
“AIR remains at the forefront of climate research and continues to study current and future climate trends as they relate to tropical cyclones and other atmospheric perils,” continued Dailey. “The AIR team also conducts its own research across the full climate spectrum — from local climate factors influencing individual events in real time to global factors influencing the risk over several years. Finally, AIR’s catastrophe loss models and site-specific engineering are able to translate climate-induced changes into easy-to-understand loss metrics.”
Corporate risk managers can apply Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics to strategic planning, operational planning, and real-time decision making. The service can improve strategic planning by playing out a wide range of simulated storm scenarios, including those more intense than have been observed historically. Operational planning can incorporate the most effective actions under various ‘what if’ scenarios and stress tests based on a replay of historical events. Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics provides forecasted track, intensity, damage, and loss analyses based on the latest official reports and forecasts for the active storm as it evolves.
Dailey concluded, “We’ve combined these unique capabilities into a new analytical tool to help companies better understand the climate’s influence on current and future risks. We’re confident the applications will help risk managers do their jobs more effectively and make more informed and confident risk management decisions. Given AIR’s best-in-class catastrophe models and risk engineering, combined with deep experience applying climate models and their projections, the new Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics service is well positioned to tackle this emerging need in the marketplace.”
