This submit is a part of a collection sponsored by AgentSync.
As catastrophic pure disasters proceed to wreak havoc on the property and casualty (P&C) insurance coverage sector, loss prevention stays a excessive precedence for insurers and property homeowners alike. Fortunately, researchers and innovators are continually considering up new applied sciences, devices, and instruments to help in loss mitigation and shopper safety when catastrophe strikes.
With the P&C sector in a precarious place, balancing escalating losses and an ever-changing danger atmosphere, know-how will play an necessary position within the trade’s success, and even its survival. Let’s discover a few of the most unusual, useful, and tech-forward loss prevention instruments in the marketplace for 3 widespread varieties of pure disasters.
Wildfires
Annually, uncontrolled wildfires destroy tens of millions of acres of land together with the houses and companies that stand in the best way of their path. The long-term financial and environmental impacts of wildfires are devestating and may take a long time to recuperate from.
As a result of wildfires usually come on shortly and with out a lot warning, early detection of all these disasters is of the utmost significance in relation to lowering property injury and saving lives. Nonetheless, present wildfire prevention options, together with guide watch towers, satellite tv for pc programs, and cameras aren’t almost as exact or up-to-date as wanted to detect unauthorized burns earlier than they’ve executed a big quantity of harm.
1. Early-detection wildfire sensors
The most recent in wildfire loss prevention know-how goals to repair these shortcomings by offering ultra-early wildfire detection. Dryad Networks, an environmental IoT startup headquartered in Berlin, Germany, developed Silvanet, a community of wi-fi environmental sensors that leverage solar energy and mesh gateways to help in low-cost early detection of wildfires. The sensors choose up early-stage wildfire indicators like elevated carbon monoxide and hydrogen gasoline particles within the air, giving firefighters a head begin on extinguishing burns earlier than they unfold.
What makes it cool?
One of many greatest challenges of conventional wildfire detection sensors is their energy consumption. Utilizing photo voltaic panels alone to energy sensors isn’t a fantastic choice in a forest the place giant teams of timber block a big quantity of the daty’s solar. By leveraging an STM32WL (We’re not too proud to confess that this know-how goes past our stage of comprehension. When you’re , here’s an explanation), Dryad’s builders discovered a strategy to get previous the ability consumption problem and create a system that’ll run for as much as 15 years within the forest.
2. Firefighting robots
Yeah, you learn that proper. Combating wildfires is a harmful job, however with the assistance of robotics, people can combat burns with out placing their very own lives in danger. Lots of the firefighting robots at present in use are machines that firefighters remotely management. This allows the robots to navigate steep terrain or enter burning buildings with out placing human lives at risk.
Nonetheless, buildings are designed for people, so whereas many firefighting robots look extra like automobiles than folks, researchers have additionally developed more human-looking models to help firefighters in emergency indoor conditions. These humanoid robots can carry out duties like opening doorways, strolling up and down stairs, and working fireplace hoses.
What makes it cool?
You imply moreover the truth that we’re speaking about firefighting robots? At AgentSync, we’re huge proponents of utilizing know-how to automate the guide duties that suck up your folks’s time and take them away from extra high-value work. By offloading work, like carrying heavy gear or evacuating folks from an affected space, onto robots, firefighters can focus their time and power on their high precedence: stopping the unfold of a fireplace.
It’s just like how our merchandise take guide producer licensing and compliance duties off insurance coverage companies’, carriers’, and MGA’s plates, permitting their folks to get again to their predominant precedence: promoting and servicing insurance coverage merchandise.
Floods
We will’t speak about pure disasters with out mentioning flooding. Floods are the commonest and most expensive pure catastrophe within the U.S. The National Weather Service estimates approximately 122 million people are at risk of flooding within the spring of 2024 alone. Within the five-year interval between 2018-2022, floods racked up roughly $45 billion in insured losses across the globe.
Extra frequent and heavy rainfall means flash floods have gotten a bigger problem in main cities and cities, however general danger consciousness for flooding of every kind stays low. This lack of knowledge means many house and enterprise homeowners underestimate the quantity of insurance coverage protection they want.
1. Publicly out there, correct water knowledge
To assist the general public make extra knowledgeable selections in relation to water security and flood administration, the Nationwide Climate Service launched the National Water Prediction Service web site in March of 2024. The platform, which leverages fashionable software program together with cloud infrastructure and geospatial know-how, gives extra correct, and user-friendly water knowledge to assist higher analyze and predict flood danger.
What makes it cool?
Whereas a web site might not sound as cool as firefighting robots, public entry to real-time flood knowledge might be simply as life-saving. The Nationwide Water Prediction Service web site offers customers insights into the present water circumstances wherever within the U.S. Plus, with the assistance of API technology, customers can entry real-time water circulate data straight from their very own units.
Whether or not we’re speaking about insurance coverage producer licensing or flood preparation, access to up-to-date data is crucial to your decision-making. Correct flood prediction knowledge offers house and enterprise homeowners ample time to safe their property and valuables and evacuate if vital.
2. Water-Gate
Whenever you hear the phrase Water-Gate, you in all probability take into consideration illicit political actions, however on this case we’re speaking about one thing a little bit extra on the nostril. MegaSecu’s Water-Gate water barrier is a literal “gate” used to dam water from flooding a construction or space. Comprised of heavy-duty PVC, the Water-Gate barrier unfolds because the water stage rises to stop flooding.
What makes it cool?
Historically, house and enterprise homeowners use sandbags to dam up the world surrounding their property and forestall flooding. Nonetheless, sandbag obstacles can take a number of folks hours of guide work to fill and deploy they usually usually leak, rendering them ineffective after one or two makes use of. The Water-Gate barrier has a 20-year lifespan and might be deployed in solely 5 minutes utilizing two folks and no different assets.
Serving to folks get extra executed with much less is a aim the Water-Gate system and AgentSync share. Simply take a look at how one forward-thinking MGA reduced their producer licensing workload from that of 1.5 full-time employees to just 30 minutes a day with AgentSync’s assist.
Earthquakes
Not even at some point into 2024, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, shifting the coastline by over 800 feet and costing about $6.5 billion in total insured losses. Earthquakes and their aftershocks can injury houses and companies, destroy infrastructure, and convey transportation to a screeching halt. They trigger nearly $15 billion in damage each year within the U.S. alone, starting from just a few damaged home windows to complete constructing collapse. But, as Taiwan’s most up-to-date main earthquake reveals, resilient infrastructure and loss prevention issues.
1. The Seismic-Cloaking Safety of Crucial Infrastructure
The Seismic-Cloacking Protection of Critical Infrastructure, or the SCPCI, entails boring a collection of tilted holes into the bottom surrounding no matter construction must be protected to make it primarily “invisible” to shock waves, form of like how a muffler dampens sound waves.
The boreholes vary from a foot to a meter in diameter and are round 150 meters deep. As soon as drilled, they flip the bottom round them right into a medium to replicate and divert harmful seismic waves away from the construction they encompass. The know-how continues to be within the early levels of improvement however has the potential to guard billions of {dollars} of infrastructure and save hundreds of lives.
What makes it cool?
In apply, the SCPCI diminished the seismic power of a magnitude 7 earthquake to that of a magnitude 5 earthquake. This has the potential to scale back the injury of an earthquake from main structural, environmental, and financial losses to only a few damaged dishes. Even cooler, this type of infrastructure might defend a variety of areas, from a single constructing to a complete metropolis.
2. Backpack rats
Moreover property injury and loss, earthquakes also can trigger important lack of human lives. When catastrophe strikes, time is of the essence as rescuers search by means of the rubble of collapsed buildings for trapped survivors. People are at a big drawback in relation to discovering and rescuing folks within the aftermath of an earthquake. Primarily, we’re simply too huge to soundly navigate the fallen particles. Researchers on the nonprofit APOPO have a greater answer: rats. Extra particularly, rats carrying tiny backpacks geared up with a digicam, two-way microphone, and GPS sign.
What makes it cool?
Two phrases: Backpack rats. That apart, it’s fairly unimaginable that builders have been in a position to create know-how sufficiently small to suit inside a backpack sized for a rat and powerful sufficient to ship and obtain frequencies underneath the heavy particles of an earthquake. Coupled with a rat’s personal abilities, like their excellent sense of odor and their means to be taught and adapt shortly, all the idea is a real testomony to the ability of mixing human (or rat) abilities with fashionable know-how for elevated effectivity and general success.
Expertise performs a number of key roles within the insurance coverage trade
Whereas the principle aim of this text is solely to focus on just a few of probably the most fascinating high-tech pure catastrophe loss prevention instruments on the market, the larger lesson comes all the way down to the position know-how performs within the insurance coverage sector. Whether or not it’s on a macro stage (lowering insured losses from pure disasters sufficient to have a constructive affect on the general affordability and availability of P&C insurance coverage) or a micro stage (enabling a single producer to onboard with an company sooner and extra effectively), it’s clear know-how is essential to the long run success of our trade.
If all this speak about firefighting robots and tiny rodent heroes has you feeling amped up and able to swap out your legacy insurance coverage know-how for extra fashionable, environment friendly options, AgentSync may help. Watch a demo to be taught extra.
Subjects
Natural Disasters
InsurTech
Tech
