From Iceland — Icelandic Developers Help Create Earthquake Damage Model

Icelandic Developers Help Create Earthquake Damage Model

Published October 3, 2011

Iceland Catastrophe Fund, working in close conjunction with Guy Carpenter, has developed a model for predicting the probability of damage in the event of an earthquake, and how much damage a quake will have done shortly after the tremors end.
The other company in question, Guy Carpenter, proudly announced the joint venture on their site. Its features include:

A hazard module built using state-of-the-art techniques by Cat Risk Solutions, a longstanding firm with a strong track record in developing earthquake models for the insurance market. … Detailed vulnerability functions derived for 19 classes of Iceland building types by Verkis, Iceland’s oldest consulting engineering firm. Verkis worked with detailed data collected from exhaustive damage surveys following the earthquakes of 2000 and 2008. … Fully classified and geo-referenced building database supplied by the Icelandic Land Registry covering 100 percent of the Icelandic building stock detailing location, use, construction type, building age and reconstruction value.

Hulda Arnadottir, the CEO of the Iceland Catastrophe Fund, is quoted as saying, “The greatest benefit for the Icelandic Catastrophe Fund is that now we have a unique model which gives us true information, based on previous events, resulting in more reasonable premium on the cover for earthquakes, our highest risk factor. The model also allows us the opportunity to inform our reinsurance companies about expected total cost immediately after an earthquake event.”
The fund’s website would be a handy bookmark to have in the event of a large earthquake, in case you want to do your own damage estimating, but for now it serves as a tool for predicting what rescue teams and clean-up crews will have to contend with after a quake.

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