This publish 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 house owners alike. Fortunately, researchers and innovators are continuously considering up new applied sciences, devices, and instruments to assist in loss mitigation and client safety when catastrophe strikes.
With the P&C sector in a precarious place, balancing escalating losses and an ever-changing danger setting, know-how will play an necessary function within the business’s success, and even its survival. Let’s discover a few of the most unusual, useful, and tech-forward loss prevention instruments available on the market for 3 widespread sorts of pure disasters.
Wildfires
Annually, uncontrolled wildfires destroy thousands and thousands 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 get well from.
As a result of wildfires usually come on shortly and with out a lot warning, early detection of these kinds of disasters is of the utmost significance in the case of lowering property injury and saving lives. Nonetheless, present wildfire prevention options, together with handbook watch towers, satellite tv for pc methods, and cameras aren’t practically as exact or up-to-date as wanted to detect unauthorized burns earlier than they’ve achieved a big quantity of injury.
1. Early-detection wildfire sensors
The newest 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 assist in low-cost early detection of wildfires. The sensors choose up early-stage wildfire indicators like elevated carbon monoxide and hydrogen fuel 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 an awesome choice in a forest the place massive teams of bushes 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. In case you’re , here’s an explanation), Dryad’s builders discovered a approach to get previous the facility 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. Preventing wildfires is a harmful job, however with the assistance of robotics, people can battle 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 permits the robots to navigate steep terrain or enter burning buildings with out placing human lives in peril.
Nonetheless, buildings are designed for people, so whereas many firefighting robots look extra like vehicles than individuals, researchers have additionally developed more human-looking models to assist 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 massive proponents of utilizing know-how to automate the handbook duties that suck up your individuals’s time and take them away from extra high-value work. By offloading work, like carrying heavy tools or evacuating individuals from an affected space, onto robots, firefighters can focus their time and power on their high precedence: stopping the unfold of a hearth.
It’s much like how our merchandise take handbook producer licensing and compliance duties off insurance coverage companies’, carriers’, and MGA’s plates, permitting their individuals to get again to their fundamental precedence: promoting and servicing insurance coverage merchandise.
Floods
We will’t discuss pure disasters with out mentioning flooding. Floods are the commonest and costliest 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 challenge in main cities and cities, however general danger consciousness for flooding of every kind stays low. This ignorance means many residence and enterprise house owners underestimate the quantity of insurance coverage protection they want.
1. Publicly out there, correct water information
To assist the general public make extra knowledgeable selections in the case of 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 information to assist higher analyze and predict flood danger.
What makes it cool?
Whereas an internet site could not sound as cool as firefighting robots, public entry to real-time flood information might be simply as life-saving. The Nationwide Water Prediction Service web site offers customers insights into the present water situations wherever within the U.S. Plus, with the assistance of API technology, customers can entry real-time water movement info immediately from their very own gadgets.
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 information offers residence and enterprise house owners ample time to safe their property and valuables and evacuate if mandatory.
2. Water-Gate
While 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 just a little extra on the nostril. MegaSecu’s Water-Gate water barrier is a literal “gate” used to dam water from flooding a construction or space. Constituted of heavy-duty PVC, the Water-Gate barrier unfolds because the water stage rises to forestall flooding.
What makes it cool?
Historically, residence and enterprise house owners use sandbags to dam up the world surrounding their property and forestall flooding. Nonetheless, sandbag limitations can take a number of individuals hours of handbook work to fill and deploy and so they 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 individuals and no different assets.
Serving to individuals get extra achieved with much less is a objective the Water-Gate system and AgentSync share. Simply have 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 a number of damaged home windows to whole constructing collapse. But, as Taiwan’s most up-to-date main earthquake exhibits, resilient infrastructure and loss prevention issues.
1. The Seismic-Cloaking Safety of Essential Infrastructure
The Seismic-Cloacking Protection of Critical Infrastructure, or the SCPCI, includes boring a collection of tilted holes into the bottom surrounding no matter construction must be protected to make it primarily “invisible” to shock waves, type 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 phases of improvement however has the potential to guard billions of {dollars} of infrastructure and save 1000’s of lives.
What makes it cool?
In follow, the SCPCI lowered the seismic power of a magnitude 7 earthquake to that of a magnitude 5 earthquake. This has the potential to cut back the injury of an earthquake from main structural, environmental, and financial losses to simply 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
Apart from property injury and loss, earthquakes also can trigger vital 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 the case of discovering and rescuing individuals within the aftermath of an earthquake. Primarily, we’re simply too massive to soundly navigate the fallen particles. Researchers on the nonprofit APOPO have a greater answer: rats. Extra particularly, rats carrying tiny backpacks outfitted with a digicam, two-way microphone, and GPS sign.
What makes it cool?
Two phrases: Backpack rats. That apart, it’s fairly unbelievable that builders had 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 expertise, like their very good sense of odor and their capacity to study and adapt shortly, your complete idea is a real testomony to the facility of mixing human (or rat) expertise with fashionable know-how for elevated effectivity and general success.
Expertise performs a number of key roles within the insurance coverage business
Whereas the primary objective of this text is just to spotlight a number of of probably the most attention-grabbing high-tech pure catastrophe loss prevention instruments on the market, the larger lesson comes right down to the function 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 influence on the general affordability and availability of P&C insurance coverage) or a micro stage (enabling a single producer to onboard with an company quicker and extra effectively), it’s clear know-how is essential to the long run success of our business.
If all this discuss 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 also help. Watch a demo to study extra.
Subjects
Natural Disasters
InsurTech
Tech
