California-based Risk Management Solutions (RMS) has expanded its catastrophe modeling capabilities to include windstorm risk in Ireland and Sweden, and earthquake risk in Turkey and the Philippines. The expansion brings the total number of territories in the RMS suite of detailed risk models to more than 50.
The RMS ™ Europe Windstorm model now covers Sweden and the Republic of Ireland in addition to the seven current countries of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Lessons learned from the catastrophic windstorms of 1999, including Windstorm Anatol, are incorporated in the new risk models.
Users are able to quantify both domestic insured losses and the correlation of loss with other modeled countries. The latest release also incorporates the most recent economic statistics, reflecting recent changes in the insurance market such as consolidation in Sweden, and rapid economic growth accompanied by expansion of insurance penetration in Ireland.
The 1999 Kocaeli and Duzce earthquakes heightened the awareness of earthquake risk in Turkey and raised concerns about the possibility of a large earthquake even closer to Istanbul. The new RMS model reflects the latest international and local research on earthquake risk in Turkey, particularly in the Marmara Sea region near Istanbul, which contains about 60 percent of the insured exposure. The model uses advanced techniques such as time-dependent event recurrence, multiple-segment fault rupture, and earthquake stress transfer to estimate the probability and severity of potential earthquakes. It also contains damage relationships specific to industrial facilities, which experienced considerable insured losses in the industrial region east of Istanbul in 1999.
There has also been a significant increase in insured earthquake exposure in the Philippines since the 1990 Luzon Earthquake, with a concentration in the Manila area. The new RMS™ Philippines Earthquake model incorporates recent research in seismic hazard modeling throughout the country, including the paleoseismic investigation of the Valley Fault System near Manila.
In addition, the model includes high-resolution geo-technical maps for the Metro Manila area, and geo-technical data at the city or municipality level for the rest of the country. Loss estimates have been validated using insurance claims data from the Luzon Earthquake.
Topics Catastrophe
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