Earthquake

Since 1999, the United States has averaged more than 3,000 individual earthquake events per year. CoreLogic's Earthquake Risk database incorporates current earthquake science and information, producing a probabilistic risk database which covers the United States including Alaska and Hawaii. The modeled database accounts for peak ground acceleration (ground shaking), earthquake faults, geologic structure, and soil type to produce the earthquake hazard risk estimation.

Integrated into CoreLogic's insurance solution CATUM, the Earthquake Risk database enables customers to accurately locate and assess insured properties for earthquake risks.

Flood

Flooding is the leading cause of property damage in the U.S. To accurately assess flood risk CoreLogic’s Basic Flood Data package incorporates three key data elements:

• FEMA flood zone designation
• Whether the property is within or outside a high-risk flood zone (Special Flood Hazard Area)
• Straight-line proximity to nearest Special Flood Hazard Area

We start with the industry’s most comprehensive database of digital flood maps and related data, then continuously update the database to reflect FEMA’s most recent studies, Letters of Map Amendment and other changes. All data is also regularly reviewed and tested to maintain CoreLogic’s stringent standards for data quality.

Flood Risk Score provides a new perspective on Flood Risk

Underwriting guidelines have traditionally relied on whether a property is "in" or "out" of a federally designated flood zone, yet historically between 25-30% of flood insurance claims come from properties located outside of the flood zones.

Although federal flood maps remain useful in limited situations, underwriting private insurance requires a more advanced and precise risk assessment that identifies high-risk properties outside of designated flood zones, lower risk properties inside the flood zone, and includes additional key risk factors such as the presence of levees and dams. CoreLogic's Flood Risk Score provides this advanced level of risk assessment on both riverine and coastal surge flooding.

Primarily used as an advanced tool to enhance underwriting capabilities, the Flood Risk Score can also be applied to policies and portfolios, offering enhanced aggregate analysis capabilities.

Hail

For the majority of insurers, hail represents the largest single loss peril in total annual claims. Damaging hail (hail > .75 inches in diameter) is generated by large thunderstorms and causes extensive damage to residential and commercial property. Using source data from NOAA National Climate Data Center, CoreLogic's climate, statistic, and geographic experts model point hail observations at a granular level. This provides underwriters with risk category and annual frequency of occurrence information, which is used to determine policy hail risks and set rates.

Storm Surge

More than fifty-three percent of the United States population lives in a coastal county and exposure to tropical weather systems in those areas continues to be on the increase.   Property and Casualty companies concerned about their coastal exposure have implemented a number of strategies to reduce their risk.  These strategies are often broad in nature and range from statewide new policy moratoriums, not issuing policies within a certain distance of the coastline or completely pulling out of coastal areas.

CoreLogic's Coastal Risk provides an increase in overall granularity by combining five data sets; Coastal Surge Risk, Hurricane Propensity, Coastal Water Feature and Mainland Determination, and Elevation into an easy to use and understand scoring method.  CoreLogic's Coastal Risk provides insurers a more accurate property-based methodology to understanding hazard risk information so insurers can better understand a property's coastal risk exposure for improved underwriting without resorting to broad brush exclusion strategies.

With Coastal Risk, insurers will not only improve underwriting decisions, they will be able to: reduce the potential for loss and adverse selection over traditional insurance practices, understand their potential for surge loss, and determine the potential for hurricane losses resulted from storm surge.  Coastal surge and hurricane propensity files are available for the Atlantic and Gulf coastal areas while the other data sets cover all coastal waters and the Great Lakes.

Wildfire

Increasing development of homes near or adjacent to the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) means increases in wildfire home losses.  The cost to protect these structures is estimated to be in excess of $1 billion each year.  To reduce exposure to loss, insurance companies must ensure that policy premiums and underwriting guidelines correctly reflect potential risk.

CoreLogic's Wildfire Risk database provides the information needed for accurate underwriting by identifying an individual property's risk vulnerability.  Developed using CoreLogic's modeling expertise and the recognized "best practices" of both government and fire research laboratories, the database identifies property risk potential by scoring the risk based on the property's distance to high brush fuel zones, and the distance to the WUI (the boundary zone where populated areas adjoin wildlands).

CoreLogic's Wildfire Risk database consists of two key data layers:

Brushfire Fuel Rank

CoreLogic's Brushfire Fuel Rank data model is designed to assess relative brushfire risk based on four factors: slope, aspect, vegetation (fuel), and vegetation composition. The mathematical combination of these four variables results in a numeric range of values that is subsequently divided into 4 risk categories: Very High, High, Moderate, or Low. This model simplifies the assessment of risk and provides insurers reliable information needed to accurately determine brushfire risk for a defined area or specific location.

FIREbreak+

FIREbreak+ is the first comprehensive tool for accurately assessing the brushfire risk along the WUI.  It identifies a policy's proximity to high risk vegetation and its residential density class, helping insurers make informed risk determinations for AK (populated areas only), CA, CO, FL, ID, MT, NV, NM, OR, UT, WA and WY.

Single Wildfire Risk Score

CoreLogic's Single Wildfire Risk Score rates properties on a 0-100 scale, allowing insurers increased flexibility in determining risk categories, as well as an opportunity to utilize the data in other applications.

Based on CoreLogic's statistical analysis of thousands of wildfire home losses, the four contributors to wildfire loss are weighted to generate a single risk score.  The risk scale offers insurers the option to create a proprietary set of conditional rules so they can:

• Accurately write policies without extensive onsite investigations
• Carefully consider policies in areas where the brushfire risk is disproportionately high due to location characteristics
• Flag locations with potential risk generated by on-property and surrounding (off-property) brushfire risk factors for onsite inspection

Wind

Each year, wind events account for millions of dollars in residential and commercial property damage.  CoreLogic's Damaging Winds dataset provides an accurate risk score and frequency for the three major types of damaging winds; straight-line, hurricane, and tornado, as well as an aggregate score of all three wind types.  Utilizing NOAA's damaging wind event data (winds >74 mph) from 1980 to the present, CoreLogic's climatological, statistical, and geographic experts modeled point wind observations to a 10x10 kilometer grid normalized by population density.

With CoreLogic's Damaging Winds database, insurance companies and corporate risk managers can understand the potential for wind losses.  Additionally, companies can utilize the database to identify lower risk zones within large geographic areas, determine relative risk potential in smaller areas, and identify low risk opportunities for the 48 contiguous states and Washington D.C.

Understand Tornado Risk

Tornadoes are on of nature’s most violent storms. Dropping out of thunderstorms any time of the year, tornadoes can cause massive destruction and deaths in seconds.. With wind speeds up to 300 miles per hour, tornadoes can move up to 70 miles per hour or remain stationary, and paths of damage can exceed a mile in width and 50 miles in length.

With the possibility of tornadoes occurring in every state, insurance companies must understand their relative potential for tornado loss and concentration of risk. CoreLogic uses the latest meteorological science, historical data and current records to provide the best tornado risk assessment possible.

Update Schedule

CoreLogic regularly updates its databases and analytical models with current public and privately sourced data and the most recent scientific research. All databases integrate into CATUM, CoreLogic's insurance enterprise solution, or into clients' existing GIS platforms. CoreLogic offers a suite of natural hazard risk databases as well as regulatory compliance and GIS databases.

Documents

Datasheets

• Damaging Winds
• Coastal Risk (Storm Surge)
• FEMA Flood Zones
• Hydrologic Unit Codes
• Insurance Data
• Wildfire

Whitepapers

• Damaging Winds White Paper
• Coastal Risk (Storm Surge) White Paper
• Hail White Paper
• Regulatory Compliance
• Wildfire Single Risk Score
• Wildfire White Paper