Verisk Climate Announces First Use of Dual-Polarization

March 3, 2015 / 3 min read

LEXINGTON, MASS., March 3, 2015 — Verisk Climate, a leading provider of enterprise climate risk management solutions, announced today the use of new radar technology for the 2015 severe weather season to map more precisely where hail falls and how severe it is. This marks the insurance industry’s first availability of hail data derived from two significant U.S. radar infrastructure improvements: dual-polarization radar data and two-minute radar data frequency. The resulting data is used by the insurance industry to respond proactively to catastrophes, verify insurance claim accuracy, and predict demand surges in building materials and labor. Verisk Climate is a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) business.

Verisk Climate’s hail data is used in property, auto, and crop insurance and related markets. It’s delivered through the Benchmark^TM application, a suite of Verisk Insurance Solutions software applications, for integration into customer enterprise platforms. The company’s data maximizes accurate hail detection while minimizing false positives that can reduce both the predictive skill of data applications and the utility of the data in the field. Verisk Climate used claims data from a significant portion of the property/casualty industry in conjunction with ground truth hail size observations to validate the accuracy of the enhanced hail data.

The National Weather Service implemented the radar infrastructure improvements to enhance the timeliness and precision of data from its national radar network. Dual-polarization radar fundamentally changes the accuracy with which hail is identified. Dual-pol radar is much more advanced in defining precisely where the line between hail versus rain or debris occurred. This is significant because heavy rain or debris can appear the same as hail when using single-polarization radar and thereby overestimate the size and extent of hail.

More frequent radar scans improve observation data for fast-moving severe storms by scanning near the ground every two minutes rather than every five minutes. Verisk Climate increased its processing horsepower to meet the challenge of more radar data that is now available twice as often. For customers, the advantage is a continuous hail swath based on direct observation, meaning that users will receive a more precise hail map for every storm, particularly those that are fast-moving.

“State-of-the-art hail data and analysis continue to be foundational to our suite of claims and underwriting solutions,” said Patrick Pollard, vice president of Insurance Solutions at Verisk Climate. “Although other vendors may not believe dual-polarization is useful for hail measurements, our scientists have confirmed that dual-pol materially improves accuracy in delineating and categorizing hail size. Once again we’re pushing the boundaries of physical and data science to transform how businesses prepare for and react to the weather.”

About Verisk Climate
Verisk Climate helps make society more resilient to the volatile natural environment. The business provides software, data, and analytics for enterprise climate risk management. Its solutions help corporations improve resilience and profitability while enhancing service to their customers. Manufacturers, distributors, and retailers rely on Verisk Climate to accelerate revenue growth through more accurate forecasts of product demand and to promote stable operations by helping mitigate supply chain risk. Insurance carriers can apply Verisk Climate solutions to help improve customer service and reduce their property combined ratios through more accurate risk selection and lower claims expense. Verisk Climate innovations draw on the data and proprietary analytics of Verisk Analytics, including disaster risk models from AIR Worldwide and environmental data and expertise from Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER). Verisk Climate is a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) business.

Media contact:

Brenda Kelly
VP Marketing
781-761-2348
bkelly@veriskclimate.com

Verisk Climate Announces First Use of Dual-Polarization to More Precisely Map Hail for the Insurance Industry