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 consistently pondering up new applied sciences, devices, and instruments to help 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 threat surroundings, know-how will play an necessary position within the business’s success, and even its survival. Let’s discover a few of the most original, useful, and tech-forward loss prevention instruments in the marketplace for 3 widespread sorts of pure disasters.
Wildfires
Every year, uncontrolled wildfires destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of land together with the houses and companies that stand in the way in which of their path. The long-term financial and environmental impacts of wildfires are devestating and might take a long time to recuperate from.
As a result of wildfires typically come on shortly and with out a lot warning, early detection of some of these disasters is of the utmost significance in the case of decreasing property injury and saving lives. Nonetheless, present wildfire prevention options, together with handbook 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 performed a big quantity of injury.
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 an ideal choice in a forest the place massive 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. In the event you’re , right here’s a proof), 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 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 automobiles than individuals, researchers have additionally developed extra human-looking fashions 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 in addition to the truth that we’re speaking about firefighting robots? At AgentSync, we’re large 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 vitality 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 foremost precedence: promoting and servicing insurance coverage merchandise.
Floods
We are able to’t discuss pure disasters with out mentioning flooding. Floods are the commonest and most expensive pure catastrophe within the U.S. The Nationwide Climate Service estimates roughly 122 million persons are liable to 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 threat consciousness for flooding of every kind stays low. This lack of understanding means many house and enterprise homeowners underestimate the quantity of insurance coverage protection they want.
1. Publicly obtainable, correct water knowledge
To assist the general public make extra knowledgeable choices in the case of water security and flood administration, the Nationwide Climate Service launched the Nationwide Water Prediction Service web site in March of 2024. The platform, which leverages fashionable software program together with cloud infrastructure and geospatial know-how, affords extra correct, and user-friendly water knowledge to assist higher analyze and predict flood threat.
What makes it cool?
Whereas an internet site could not sound as cool as firefighting robots, public entry to real-time flood knowledge could be simply as life-saving. The Nationwide Water Prediction Service web site offers customers insights into the present water circumstances anyplace within the U.S. Plus, with the assistance of API know-how, customers can entry real-time water move info immediately from their very own gadgets.
Whether or not we’re speaking about insurance coverage producer licensing or flood preparation, entry to up-to-date knowledge is essential to your decision-making. Correct flood prediction knowledge offers house and enterprise homeowners ample time to safe their property and valuables and evacuate if essential.
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 a bit of 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 realm 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 typically leak, rendering them ineffective after one or two makes use of. The Water-Gate barrier has a 20-year lifespan and could be deployed in solely 5 minutes utilizing two individuals and no different sources.
Serving to individuals get extra performed with much less is a objective the Water-Gate system and AgentSync share. Simply have a look at how one forward-thinking MGA lowered their producer licensing workload from that of 1.5 full-time workers to only half-hour a day with AgentSync’s assist.
Earthquakes
Not even sooner or later into 2024, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, shifting the shoreline by over 800 ft and costing about $6.5 billion in complete insured losses. Earthquakes and their aftershocks can injury houses and companies, destroy infrastructure, and convey transportation to a screeching halt. They trigger almost $15 billion in injury every 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 exhibits, resilient infrastructure and loss prevention issues.
1. The Seismic-Cloaking Safety of Vital Infrastructure
The Seismic-Cloacking Safety of Vital Infrastructure, or the SCPCI, entails boring a collection of tilted holes into the bottom surrounding no matter construction must be protected to make it basically “invisible” to shock waves, kind 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 mirror and divert harmful seismic waves away from the construction they encompass. The know-how remains to be within the early levels of growth however has the potential to guard billions of {dollars} of infrastructure and save 1000’s of lives.
What makes it cool?
In observe, the SCPCI lowered the seismic vitality 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 may 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 vital lack of human lives. When catastrophe strikes, time is of the essence as rescuers search via 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 large to soundly navigate the fallen particles. Researchers on the nonprofit APOPO have a greater resolution: rats. Extra particularly, rats sporting tiny backpacks outfitted with a digital camera, 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 below the heavy particles of an earthquake. Coupled with a rat’s personal abilities, like their excellent sense of odor and their capacity to be taught and adapt shortly, the whole idea is a real testomony to the ability of mixing human (or rat) abilities with fashionable know-how for elevated effectivity and general success.
Know-how performs a number of key roles within the insurance coverage business
Whereas the principle objective of this text is just to spotlight just a few of essentially 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 (decreasing insured losses from pure disasters sufficient to have a optimistic 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 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 help. Watch a demo to be taught extra.
Subjects
Pure Disasters
InsurTech
Tech
