Flood risk modeller JBA Risk Management has announced the launch of a new probabilistic global flood model that will allow re/insurers to model river and surface water flood at 30 metres worldwide.
The model, which JBA claims to be the first of its kind, will enable consistent comparisons of loss across both country and continental borders.
It is underpinned by JBA’s modelling technology, FLY, which permits risk quantification for any location in the world, and eliminates the need to embed assumptions into the model.
This new approach facilitates more options for investigation and customisation when analysing a portfolio, including for data, parameters and assumptions.
JBA also revealed that the model will run within the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework, the open source platform for developing, deploying and executing catastrophe models.
“The Global Flood Model opens up a whole world of new opportunity,” said Stephen Hutchings, Head of Modelling at JBA Risk Management. “Firstly, it presents users with a probabilistic flood model for any country and thereby eliminates the coverage gap. This is a huge step forward.”
“Secondly, the system is unprecedented in its flexibility, enabling users to customise the model to create the view of risk most relevant to their portfolio.”
Dickie Whitaker, CEO of Oasis, also commented: “JBA Risk Management has taken a bold new approach in overcoming the challenges of creating a global flood model. This is a significant development which we hope will be transformative for the industry.
“Its compatibility with Oasis is a key benefit, making the model easily accessible to the market, and allowing users to model other perils alongside flood,” he added.
Finally, Jane Toothill, Director at JBA Risk Management, stated: “Gaps in global coverage, often in important flood-prone regions, have proved costly for (re)insurers and the market has long been demanding consistent and transparent global data.”
“We knew we had to think differently in order to overcome the challenges of creating a global flood model and JBA’s FLY was the technological breakthrough we needed,” Toothill continued. “This is a really exciting new direction for the modelling industry.”
