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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.

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 ...

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...

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.

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.

FireLine TM 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...

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.

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.

Kyle Beatty joins 3 hurricane impact experts from Verisk Analytics in a special session at the Extreme Weather Insurance Risk Management Congress (EWRM) today in NYC “Superstorm Sandy Post Event Assessment: Assessing The Optimal Decision Making Tools For Managing Catastrophic Weather Events: Addressing Weather Prediction, Modeling Challenges, Claims Analysis And Impact Estimates.”