Power of Geography for insurers....

10 October 2007, 2:08pm

Severe floods prompt leading insurers to gauge the power of geography

Representatives from some of Britain’s leading insurers were given an insight into the power of Ordnance Survey information at a special event focusing on flood risk.

Directors, managers and specialist underwriters were among a 100-strong audience at a ‘flooding question time’ held by the national mapping agency and Insurance Times.

High on the agenda were the risks and challenges posed by the severe floods that affected large parts of England during the summer. Emergency mapping from Ordnance Survey helped with vital decisions during the floods, such as which properties to evacuate in the most at-risk areas.

The potential for Ordnance Survey information to support both risk assessment and longer‑term catastrophe planning was highlighted by Ordnance Survey’s Director of Customers and Market Development, James Brayshaw, a civil engineer and one of four expert panel members.

“Geography is at the heart of risk assessment and modelling,” he said. “We are doing a great deal of work at the sharp end of data collection so that insurers have access to the very best available information on which to base localised flood predictions and other peril models. Although there are inevitably different levels of take-up, the insurance industry in general has woken up to the power of geography in the past three or four years. We are seeing a shift in the use of information to build more accurate risk models.”

Mr Brayshaw outlined the collaborative work involving Ordnance Survey, the Environment Agency, the Met Office, the UK Hydrographic Office and other bodies designed to help assess the impacts of changes in flood frequencies, flood magnitudes and sea levels. Ordnance Survey has provided the topographic data for the creation of high-precision terrain models and structured digital river networks. This should lead to both better flood response and planning for the future.

The event, held at the City Presentation Centre in London, also looked at issues around data sharing, government information standards and the benefits to insurers of using intelligent databases. Other panel members included Swenja Surminski, policy adviser on climate change at the Association of British Insurers, and Alan Gairns, Development Manager for Property Underwriting at Royal & Sun Alliance.

After the question time session the audience saw various demonstrations of how Ordnance Survey information can help analyse flooding down to individual property and address level.

Among the products on display was Ordnance Survey’s national spatial address infrastructure, OS MasterMap Address Layer 2. Using this information, insurers can locate more than 27 million individual postal addresses as opposed to relying on postcode banding. This means they can be much more targeted in managing risks, claims and fraud. Address layer 2 also contains around 1.8 million properties without postal addresses. These include community halls, car parks, depots and substations – all potentially insurable locations important to risk assessment and securing competitive advantage.

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