Blog
Solar Storm Risk to the North Am. Electric Grid
Lloyds and AER published a ground-breaking study of solar storm risk to the electric grid in North America.
The Space Weather Study by Lloyds and AER analyzes the likelihood of extreme geomagnetic storms, the specific vulnerabilities of the North American power grid, the regions at highest risk and the implications for the insurance industry and society generally.
“These innovations to address the risk posed by geomagnetic disturbances comprise an interdisciplinary study tying together historical records, space physics, geophysics, engineering, and economics.” – Lisa Wei, PhD, AER
AER scientists who co-authored the report and provided research and analysis:
- Nicole Homeier, PhD, Director of Product Innovation and Senior Staff Scientist at AER
- Lisa Wei, PhD, Staff Scientist at AER
Proactively Monitoring Wildfires in the West
The 2013 wildfire season in the western United States is looking to be a difficult one, fueled by a combination of factors, including a drier-than-normal preceding winter, generally drier vegetative fuels, and warmer current conditions. In addition, projections of higher temperatures and lower-than-normal precipitation this summer raise the prospects of what could become an intense wildfire season.
A number of fierce wildfires are raging, threatening hundreds of thousands of properties, in both Northern and Southern California. They include the Panther Fire (Tehama County), the Summit Fire (Riverside County), and the Springs Fire (Ventura County). Those fires have already damaged homes and are threatening hundreds of thousands of additional properties. Since it started last Thursday, the Springs Fire has spread along the coast north of Los Angeles, carried by winds in excess of 43 miles per hour. The fire has also partially shut down the Pacific Coast Highway.
To date, the fire has reportedly damaged 15 homes, destroyed 26 outbuildings, and laid waste to more than 27,500 acres of brush.
We at Verisk and AER are monitoring these wildfire developments through cutting-edge satellite imaging technology, some of which we also use in FireLine™, our property insurance wildfire risk assessment solution.
AER provides near-real-time data on current wildfires through AER Respond™ for Wildfire Service. The service applies proprietary algorithms to the most up-to-date satellite imagery — both moderate (>100 meters) and high (<10 meters) spatial resolution — to provide the following analytics:
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accumulated burn area — reanalyzed when new imagery becomes available
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new burn area — assessed relative to burn area from prior analysis
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hot areas — (if any) provided at burn area analysis times
AER has scheduled the analytics for daily releases plus intermediate releases when new data becomes available in a variety of geospatial formats (for example, shapefiles) that seamlessly integrate into existing GIS systems.
AER Respond for Wildfire Service can help with your insurance operations in a number of ways:
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timely assessment of potential claims activity
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support for underwriting moratoriums
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timely allocation of resources for claims adjusting
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post event analysis for claims adjusting
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overall exposure management
AER Respond for Wildfire Service is tracking several California wildifires, including the Panther Fire (Tehama County), the Summit Fire (Riverside County), and the Springs Fire (Ventura County). The insets above show polygons of burn area, changing over time. Also shown are hot areas/hotspots (red dots) in the Springs Fire area.
AER’s “amazingly accurate” winter outlook
The AER winter forecast has now been correct for four years in a row (Read Press Release). Even before that we had published a paper documenting that the AER model was the most skillful, e.g., accurate, winter seasonal forecast model that can be verified. Yet before every new forecast, winter or summer, there is great pressure to be correct and the need to validate the accuracy and usefulness of our techniques. And to make things more difficult this past winter, December 2012 got off to a blazing start. The consensus quickly became this winter would simply be a repeat of last year’s record mild winter. But our predictors continued to signal bullish for cold from January onward and we stayed the course.
It is very satisfying knowing now that the winter is over, that the warm start in December was an aberration and the remainder of the winter was indeed cold and in many cities very snowy, including in our hometown of Boston (though pity the people of Duluth that had their snowiest month ever this April!). Perseverance has paid off and it is nice to be recognized for another correct forecast.
Throughout my career I have heard that we are not good just lucky. But getting the forecast correct even once is extremely difficult and we have produced, the best forecast four years in a row, including this winter; a result that is highly improbable simply due to chance. The correct forecast is not just for the US but also for the entire Northern Hemisphere.
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AER Forecast Proves Exceptionally Accurate for 2013 U.S. Heating Demand |
Forecast Skill
One metric of the forecast skill or accuracy is the pattern correlation between the predicted and observed temperatures. A perfect forecast would produce a value of 1 and any value above 0 is considered skillful. The pattern correlation for both December through February (Dec., Jan., Feb, or DJF) and January through March were comparable at 0.6 and 0.65 respectively. The skill for Eurasia was also comparable, for DJF it was 0.67 and for JFM 0.64. But the best overall score was for North America for the January-March period with a pattern correlation of 0.79.
Another metric of skill is the root mean square error (RMSE), which tallies the average error at every point. For the US the area average RMSE was less than 1ºF.
"Job Well Done!"
Both of these metrics are not only great scores for a three-month forecast; they are great scores for a three day forecast!
The accurate forecast has not gone unnoticed and wishes of congratulations and job well done have come from clients, fellow scientists and even the media including Harvey Leonard the chief meteorologist at WCVB. But the most effusive praise so far has been from the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang. Whose blog title says it all: “AER’s Judah Cohen produces amazingly accurate winter outlook.” It seems that jaw dropping was the most common reaction to the verification of the forecast, which was Jason Samenow’s reaction as written in the article and from a client.
Here at AER we believe that we produce the best seasonal forecast even with less manpower and resources at our disposal than the government forecast centers. A big reason is because we made the decision from the beginning not to follow the herd and obsess with ENSO as the only seasonal forecast predictor. Instead our focus has been on the Arctic Oscillation and of course Siberian snow cover; focusing on these predictors has paid off for our clients. And as Jason concludes in his blog: “Perhaps it’s time … government centers begin to incorporate Cohen’s methodology into the preparation of their outlooks.”
It is very gratifying for others to acknowledge our leadership role in seasonal forecasting. But there is no time to rest on our laurels and Jason Furtado, Justin Jones and I are already sweating the summer forecast.
Download the Seasonal Forecast brochure
Read the Press Release
Read more about the Winter Seasonal Forecast
Hurricane Season 2013: Are you prepared?
Does your Claims team have optimal decision tools for the 2013 hurricane season? AER scientist and technical expert, Bill Ramstrom, who provided Hurricane Sandy updates, discusses best practices used by industry leaders to improve cycle time and customer satisfaction in the claims process. Preparing for The Upcoming Hurricane Season: Optimizing Decision Tools for Claims Response, hosted by Verisk Monday Web Seminar Series. Bill manages AER Respond and AER Benchmark.
Register here for Monday, April 22nd Web seminar.
Follow the conversation on Twitter #AERHurricane.
Last week’s Web Seminar, Identify Preexisting Hail Damage before Underwriting the Policy, is now available On Demand.
AER experts share their knowledge on weather-related perils
To assist insurance carriers and restoration service providers with resilience to weather-related perils, experts from Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), will present a web seminar on:
| Identify Preexisting Hail Damage before Underwriting the Policy | Underwriters | Despite the high rate of claims, many homes damaged by hail don’t get repaired, leaving insurers writing new business vulnerable to paying claims for preexisting damage. | April 15, 2013 2:00 p.m., EST |
| Preparing for The Upcoming Hurricane Season: Optimizing Decision Tools for Claims Response | CAT and claims management | In this webinar we’ll consider best practices for managing Claims response for hurricanes. | April 22, 2013 2:00 p.m., EST |
| Innovations in Catastrophe Claims Analytics: Combining Weather Analytics with Claims Data | CAT and claims management | Learn how you can bring historical and near-real-time weather data to the field using innovative valuation tools. | May 20, 2013 2:00 p.m., EST |
These web seminars are part of Verisk Insurance Solutions Monday Web Seminar Series.
Climate Change Business Journal Awards AER for Renewable Power Innovations
AER will be awarded with the Business Achievement Award in the in low carbon and renewable power category at the 2012 Environmental Business Journal awards March 6-8, 2013.
AER is receiving the award from the Climate Change Business Journal ® for innovative approaches that reduce risk in adopting renewable energy. The award citation indicates technical merit for developing new approaches and methods for measuring and forecasting solar and wind resources that allow renewable power plant developers to measure more accurately both long-term production and short-term variations in resource availability.
- AER developed the Solance™ solar irradiance forecast specifically tailored to the needs of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants.
- AER was also lauded for developing a new method specifically designed for the offshore wind energy market to provide synthetic 30‐year climatologies — at ultra‐high space and time resolution — of wind at hub height.
Another Verisk Analytics company, 3E Company, is also receiving a Business Achievement award from EBJ.
“We’re delighted that both 3E and AER have won Business Achievement Awards,” said Scott Stephenson, president and chief operating officer of Verisk Analytics. “Both companies are leaders in their respective industries and are united by the common goal that all Verisk companies share: the desire to reduce risk, facilitate compliance, and create safer living and working environments. We applaud 3E’s and AER’s dedication to innovation and commend them for continually striving for excellence.”
Read the full press release.
AER Respond upgrade for 2013 hail season
Hail-related damage is a significant cause of loss and also an opportunity to improve policyholder satisfaction.
Today’s upgrade to AER Respond™ provides a 15% improvement in the ability to validate hail claims. See the press release for testimonials from carriers, service providers, manufacturers, and insurance industry.
These upgrades enable customers to prepare for the upcoming hail season and are available in our near-real-time AER Respond and historical AER BenchmarkTM products.
As my colleague Nicole Homeier, PhD, says, “Until now, the fundamental gap in all radar interpretations of hail has been ground truth. We’ve confirmed that insurance claims data, when considered carefully to avoid bias, has proven invaluable to validate radar-based hail data. Insurance claims data can also elevate the state-of-the-art of algorithms that predict the occurrence of claims and the resulting repairs.”
FireLine highlighted by NASA as an outstanding commercial application of Landsat data
FireLineTM was highlighted as an outstanding commercial application that uses Landsat data, during a Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) pre-launch press conference. (Video link) FireLine, powered by AER technology, is the insurance industry's leading wildfire risk solution covering millions of properties in 10 western states. Verisk Analytics business unit, AER, develops FireLine using several cutting-edge proprietary technologies and data sources, including Landsat multispectral imagery. The Fireline product is updated regularly to accurately capture the changing wildfire risk landscape.
Watch the press conference video "Global Observations to Continue with New NASA Satellite" on NASAtelevision. Highlight of the Fireline product using Landsat data for the insurance industry starts at minute 14:37.
Learn more about how FireLine helps the insurance industry manage risk from wildfires.
AER Northeast Blizzard of 2013 Post-Storm Analysis
The Blizzard of 2013 will most certainly be a standout storm for many years to come. The setup and development of the storm was nearly textbook-like, with the phasing of two systems and cold-air damming established with an Arctic high over Québec. Like many big Northeast snowstorms, this storm was also well forecasted, and public preparedness and awareness was notably high in the days leading up to the storm. This latter aspect was a huge factor in limiting injuries and casualties throughout the region.
See the full post-Storm Analysis here.
NSF highlights AER research on trends in flooding risk
SuperStorm Sandy was a vivid reminder that hurricane damage is not only wind damage and that surge damage can be devastating and life threatening.
In part supported by NSF, I led a collaboration with AIR-Worldwide and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study how hurricane surge risk to property might change in the future both as a result of changes to sea level and of changes to hurricane tracks and intensities.
Find out more from our journal article An estimate of increases in storm surge risk to property from sea level rise in the first half of the twenty-first century and from my recorded presentation at AMS in 2010 Quantification of increased storm surge risk to property as sea level rises
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