Live flood alert Insurtech Previsico is set to leverage the new €4.3bn Meteosat satellite system to deliver even faster and more accurate flood warnings for clients like Zurich, Liberty, and Generali.
The insurtech already provides real-time, property-level surface water flood forecasts that enable clients to mitigate flood impacts, which are given up to 48 hours in advance and continuously updated with new weather data.
Though Previsico notes that the issue with existing weather forecasting technologies is that every storm is different, with hourly changes in weather patterns making them difficult to predict.
The new Meteosat Third Generation system, however, will provide 50 times more data than existing Meteosat satellites, greatly increasing the accuracy of future forecasts.
This first satellite of the new system, which launched on 13 December, will help meteorologists with rapid detection and forecasting of severe weather events so that more accurate warnings can be given.
The system will ultimately consist of three satellites in geostationary orbit, 36,000km above the African equator, providing images of Europe every 2.5 minutes, including the first observations of lightning from space.
Jonathan Jackson, CEO of Previsico, commented, “The cost of flooding to the global economy is significant, well-known, and forecast to increase greatly in the future due to increasingly volatile weather caused by global warming.
“Yet many of these flood impacts are entirely avoidable with the right technology in place. The data from Meteosat will enable Previsico to take our already world-leading service to the next level.”
