This publish is a part of a sequence 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 continually pondering 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 surroundings, expertise will play an necessary function within the business’s success, and even its survival. Let’s discover a number of the most original, useful, and tech-forward loss prevention instruments in the marketplace for 3 frequent kinds of pure disasters.
Wildfires
Annually, uncontrolled wildfires destroy tens of millions 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 get better from.
As a result of wildfires typically come on rapidly and with out a lot warning, early detection of all these disasters is of the utmost significance in terms of decreasing property injury and saving lives. Nevertheless, present wildfire prevention options, together with guide watch towers, satellite tv for pc programs, and cameras aren’t practically as exact or up-to-date as wanted to detect unauthorized burns earlier than they’ve finished a major quantity of harm.
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 greatest challenges of conventional wildfire detection sensors is their energy consumption. Utilizing photo voltaic panels alone to energy sensors isn’t an important possibility in a forest the place giant 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 stage of comprehension. For those who’re , right here’s a proof), Dryad’s builders discovered a technique 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 struggle burns with out placing their very own lives in danger. Most of the firefighting robots at present 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.
Nevertheless, buildings are designed for people, so whereas many firefighting robots look extra like vehicles than folks, researchers have additionally developed extra human-looking fashions 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 apart from 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 gear 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 much 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 primary precedence: promoting and servicing insurance coverage merchandise.
Floods
We will’t speak about pure disasters with out mentioning flooding. Floods are the commonest and costliest pure catastrophe within the U.S. The Nationwide Climate Service estimates roughly 122 million persons are prone 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 situation in main cities and cities, however general danger consciousness for flooding of all kinds stays low. This lack of information means many residence 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 terms 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 expertise, provides extra correct, and user-friendly water knowledge to assist higher analyze and predict flood danger.
What makes it cool?
Whereas an internet site might not sound as cool as firefighting robots, public entry to real-time flood knowledge may 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 expertise, customers can entry real-time water move data instantly 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 residence and enterprise homeowners ample time to safe their property and valuables and evacuate if needed.
2. Water-Gate
If 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 slightly 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, residence and enterprise homeowners use sandbags to dam up the realm surrounding their property and stop flooding. Nevertheless, sandbag limitations can take a number of folks hours of guide work to fill and deploy they usually typically leak, rendering them ineffective after one or two makes use of. The Water-Gate barrier has a 20-year lifespan and may be deployed in solely 5 minutes utilizing two folks and no different sources.
Serving to folks get extra finished with much less is a aim 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 simply 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 toes and costing about $6.5 billion in complete insured losses. Earthquakes and their aftershocks can injury houses and companies, destroy infrastructure, and produce transportation to a screeching halt. They trigger practically $15 billion in injury annually within the U.S. alone, starting from a couple of damaged home windows to complete 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 Essential Infrastructure
The Seismic-Cloacking Safety of Essential Infrastructure, or the SCPCI, entails boring a sequence 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 expertise continues 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 apply, 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 shield a variety of areas, from a single constructing to a whole metropolis.
2. Backpack rats
Apart from property injury and loss, earthquakes may 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 major drawback in terms of discovering and rescuing folks within the aftermath of an earthquake. Primarily, we’re simply too huge to securely navigate the fallen particles. Researchers on the nonprofit APOPO have a greater answer: rats. Extra particularly, rats sporting 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 capable of create expertise sufficiently small to suit inside a backpack sized for a rat and robust 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 potential to be taught and adapt rapidly, your complete idea is a real testomony to the facility of mixing human (or rat) expertise with fashionable expertise for elevated effectivity and general success.
Know-how performs a number of key roles within the insurance coverage business
Whereas the principle aim of this text is solely to spotlight a couple of of essentially the most attention-grabbing high-tech pure catastrophe loss prevention instruments on the market, the larger lesson comes all the way down to the function expertise 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 quicker and extra effectively), it’s clear expertise is essential to the longer term success of our business.
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 fashionable, environment friendly options, AgentSync can assist. Watch a demo to be taught extra.
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