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 always pondering up new applied sciences, devices, and instruments to assist 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 threat surroundings, expertise will play an essential function 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 available on the market for 3 frequent sorts of pure disasters.
Wildfires
Every year, uncontrolled wildfires destroy tens of millions of acres of land together with the properties 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 many years to recuperate from.
As a result of wildfires usually come on rapidly and with out a lot warning, early detection of most 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 guide watch towers, satellite tv for pc techniques, and cameras aren’t almost as exact or up-to-date as wanted to detect unauthorized burns earlier than they’ve performed a major quantity of injury.
1. Early-detection wildfire sensors
The newest in wildfire loss prevention expertise 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 decide 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 largest challenges of conventional wildfire detection sensors is their energy consumption. Utilizing photo voltaic panels alone to energy sensors isn’t an awesome possibility in a forest the place massive teams of bushes block a major quantity of the daty’s solar. By leveraging an STM32WL (We’re not too proud to confess that this expertise goes past our degree of comprehension. In the event you’re , here’s an explanation), Dryad’s builders discovered a option 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 presently 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 assist firefighters in emergency indoor conditions. These humanoid robots can carry out duties like opening doorways, strolling up and down stairs, and working hearth hoses.
What makes it cool?
You imply in addition to the truth that we’re speaking about firefighting robots? At AgentSync, we’re huge proponents of utilizing expertise 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 tools or evacuating folks from an affected space, onto robots, firefighters can focus their time and power on their prime precedence: stopping the unfold of a hearth.
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 fundamental precedence: promoting and servicing insurance coverage merchandise.
Floods
We are able to’t speak about pure disasters with out mentioning flooding. Floods are the most typical 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 challenge in main cities and cities, however general threat consciousness for flooding of all kinds stays low. This lack of knowledge means many dwelling and enterprise homeowners underestimate the quantity of insurance coverage protection they want.
1. Publicly out there, correct water information
To assist the general public make extra knowledgeable choices 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 trendy software program together with cloud infrastructure and geospatial expertise, presents extra correct, and user-friendly water information 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 information 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 move data straight 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 dwelling 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 most likely 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. Constituted of heavy-duty PVC, the Water-Gate barrier unfolds because the water degree rises to stop flooding.
What makes it cool?
Historically, dwelling and enterprise homeowners use sandbags to dam up the world surrounding their property and forestall flooding. Nonetheless, sandbag boundaries can take a number of folks hours of guide 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 folks and no different sources.
Serving to folks get extra performed with much less is a objective 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 properties 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 couple of damaged home windows to whole 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 Vital 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, 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 replicate and divert harmful seismic waves away from the construction they encompass. The expertise continues to be within the early levels of growth however has the potential to guard billions of {dollars} of infrastructure and save hundreds 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 only a few damaged dishes. Even cooler, this type of infrastructure may shield a variety of areas, from a single constructing to a whole metropolis.
2. Backpack rats
Moreover property injury and loss, earthquakes can even 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 major drawback in the case of 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 resolution: rats. Extra particularly, rats carrying tiny backpacks geared up with a digital camera, two-way microphone, and GPS sign.
What makes it cool?
Two phrases: Backpack rats. That apart, it’s fairly unbelievable that builders have been capable of create expertise sufficiently small to suit inside a backpack sized for a rat and robust sufficient to ship and obtain frequencies beneath the heavy particles of an earthquake. Coupled with a rat’s personal abilities, like their very good sense of odor and their skill to study and adapt rapidly, your entire idea is a real testomony to the facility of mixing human (or rat) abilities with trendy expertise for elevated effectivity and general success.
Know-how performs a number of key roles within the insurance coverage trade
Whereas the primary objective of this text is solely to spotlight a couple of of essentially the most fascinating high-tech pure catastrophe loss prevention instruments on the market, the larger lesson comes right down to the function expertise performs within the insurance coverage sector. Whether or not it’s on a macro degree (decreasing insured losses from pure disasters sufficient to have a constructive impression on the general affordability and availability of P&C insurance coverage) or a micro degree (enabling a single producer to onboard with an company quicker and extra effectively), it’s clear expertise is essential to the longer term 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 expertise for extra trendy, environment friendly options, AgentSync might help. Watch a demo to study extra.
Subjects
Natural Disasters
InsurTech
Tech
