Guy Carpenter Holds Webinar on 2010 Catastrophic Event Response Plan

Guy Carpenter held a webinar on July 7, 2010 to discuss its catastrophic event response plan for 2010.

Internally, when an event occurs, a regional Guy Carpenter representative activates the event response, which sets teams across various regions to answer questions and provide information in a timely manner.  Vendor and i-aXs® tools will be relied upon to create client deliverables throughout the catastrophe response, with the exclusion of flood and surge events, which are handled differently.

Guy Carpenter has set benchmarks for various types of events to determine what constitutes a ‘major’ event as follows:

• Hurricanes
  • Category 2 or higher impacting Florida
  • Category 3 or higher impacting other areas
  • Storms of smaller magnitude but large wind swath will be considered
• Earthquakes
  • 6.0-magnitude or higher with depth of 9.5 km or more
• Other types of severe weather
  • Based on client demand, the regional team will decide whether to activate cat response plan

Once the event response has been activated, event team roles will be assigned internally, with daily conference calls scheduled.  Communication to brokers explaining capabilities to model the actual event and to model general events of that type, as well as a survey of third party authorities’ responses and estimates will be executed.  Tips and cautions for client discussions, including uncertainty and the major factors driving models, will be discussed internally.  For hurricanes, two daily e-mail updates containing summaries of vendor and industry estimates will be sent up to three days before landfall.  After landfall, one e-mail update containing estimates and projected path, as well as information on when final event sets will be posted, will be sent.

Overview of vendor offerings for tracking events

The AIR Worldwide ALERT (“Air Loss Estimates in Real Time”) tool tracks cyclones in the US, the Caribbean, Japan, and Australia.  Pre-landfall, possible scenarios with associated loss exceedance probabilities are posted.  Post-landfall, event sets can be downloaded to analyze losses specific to client portfolios.

EQECAT’s CatWatch reports on earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, windstorms, wildfires, and terrorism.  E-mail notifications are sent when new reports are issued.

RMS (“Risk Management Solutions”) offers around-the-clock monitoring of global events with details on event characteristics and location, including a list of affected counties and zip codes and parameters for simulating a scenario event in RiskLink.   Industry loss estimates for significant events that occur in regions covered by RMS cat models and industry exposure databases are also accessible by all RMS clients.

In addition, RMS also provides hurricane-specific updates for Atlantic storms with Category 1 status or higher and for East Pacific basin Category 1 storms with the potential to impact the U.S.  Updates are issued every 24 hours. 

RMS RiskOnline provides real-time probabilistic loss estimates for named Category 1 or above hurricanes located west of 58 degrees longitude prior to hurricane landfall for a company or industry with results for the Gulf and Atlantic by region, state, line of business, and county.   Updates are every six hours and are based on National Hurricane Center information.  Guy Carpenter sponsors its clients for this service.

 

Overview of i-aXs® tools and perils

Several hazard forecast tools are available through Guy Carpenter’s i-aXs® exposure management platform.

RealCat is an easy and quick method to see counties and zip codes for exposure and to analyze past storms (from 2007 onward) that are no longer active. 

Hazard Layer has county-level maps with a forecast wind swath layer and is used to view the current position, forecast path, and estimate exposure to storms in “what if” scenarios.  The limitation of Hazard Layer is that the data only shows storms that have been active within the prior seven days.

RMS Event Loss is event tracks displayed on a map with portfolio losses and loss perspectives included in the reports.

Radar Position provides a real-time radar update every six minutes, including current position, precipitation and more.

LiveCat, developed by Weather Services International (“WSI”), is an ensemble of 50-100 storm tracks, landfall probabilities by date, with updates every 12 hours.  The licensing fee for LiveCat is $20,000.

RealCat NEXRAD is used when looking at tornadoes, hail, and wind within 24-48 hours of a storm.  This tool scans the U.S. every few minutes and is able to measure the size of hail balls, for example.  These reports can overestimate conditions, because it examines clouds as opposed to actual conditions on the ground.

For local storm reports, RealCat is used 48 hours after a storm and shows exposure within one mile of a tornado, hail or windstorm.  The limitations of this tool are that not all events are reported to this agency and that events tend to filter in hours after an event.

For weather warnings, Hazard Layer provides severe weather warnings with five minute updates and advisories for floods that look at more than 3,800 river gauges and classify floods by severity.   RealCat uses MODIS (“Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer”) and FIRMS (“Fire Information for Resource Management System”) data to provide reports on wildfires.  MODIS layers allow users to view different time series breakouts.