This publish 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 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 setting, expertise will play an essential function within the trade’s success, and even its survival. Let’s discover among the most unusual, useful, and tech-forward loss prevention instruments in the marketplace for 3 frequent varieties of pure disasters.
Wildfires
Every year, uncontrolled wildfires destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of land together with the properties and companies that stand in the best way of their path. The long-term financial and environmental impacts of wildfires are devestating and might take many years to get well from.
As a result of wildfires typically come on shortly and with out a lot warning, early detection of most of these disasters is of the utmost significance relating to decreasing property injury and saving lives. Nevertheless, present wildfire prevention options, together with handbook watch towers, satellite tv for pc methods, and cameras aren’t practically as exact or up-to-date as wanted to detect unauthorized burns earlier than they’ve performed a big quantity of harm.
1. Early-detection wildfire sensors
The most recent 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 ideal choice in a forest the place giant 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 expertise goes past our stage of comprehension. Should you’re , right here’s an evidence), Dryad’s builders discovered a approach 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 battle burns with out placing their very own lives in danger. Most of the firefighting robots presently 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 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 fireplace hoses.
What makes it cool?
You imply in addition to the truth that we’re speaking about firefighting robots? At AgentSync, we’re massive proponents of utilizing expertise to automate the handbook 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 fireplace.
It’s just like how our merchandise take handbook producer licensing and compliance duties off insurance coverage companies’, carriers’, and MGA’s plates, permitting their folks to get again to their most important precedence: promoting and servicing insurance coverage merchandise.
Floods
We are able to’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 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 subject in main cities and cities, however total danger consciousness for flooding of every kind stays low. This lack of knowledge means many residence and enterprise homeowners underestimate the quantity of insurance coverage protection they want.
1. Publicly obtainable, correct water information
To assist the general public make extra knowledgeable choices relating to 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 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 danger.
What makes it cool?
Whereas a web 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 provides customers insights into the present water situations wherever within the U.S. Plus, with the assistance of API expertise, customers can entry real-time water move info 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 information is essential to your decision-making. Correct flood prediction information provides residence and enterprise homeowners ample time to safe their property and valuables and evacuate if essential.
2. Water-Gate
Whenever 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. 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 world surrounding their property and forestall flooding. Nevertheless, sandbag boundaries can take a number of folks hours of handbook 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 might be deployed in solely 5 minutes utilizing two folks and no different assets.
Serving to folks get extra performed with much less is a purpose the Water-Gate system and AgentSync share. Simply take a look at how one forward-thinking MGA lowered their producer licensing workload from that of 1.5 full-time staff to simply half-hour a day with AgentSync’s assist.
Earthquakes
Not even at some point into 2024, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, shifting the shoreline by over 800 toes and costing about $6.5 billion in whole insured losses. Earthquakes and their aftershocks can injury properties and companies, destroy infrastructure, and convey transportation to a screeching halt. They trigger practically $15 billion in injury every year within the U.S. alone, starting from a number 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 Essential Infrastructure
The Seismic-Cloacking Safety of Essential 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, type 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 improvement 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 power 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 simply 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
Apart from property injury and loss, earthquakes may also trigger vital lack of human lives. When catastrophe strikes, time is of the essence as rescuers search by way of the rubble of collapsed buildings for trapped survivors. People are at a big drawback relating to discovering and rescuing folks within the aftermath of an earthquake. Primarily, we’re simply too massive to soundly navigate the fallen particles. Researchers on the nonprofit APOPO have a greater resolution: rats. Extra particularly, rats carrying 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 had been in a position to 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 means to study and adapt shortly, the complete idea is a real testomony to the ability of mixing human (or rat) expertise with trendy expertise for elevated effectivity and total success.
Know-how performs a number of key roles within the insurance coverage trade
Whereas the primary purpose of this text is solely to spotlight a number 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 stage (decreasing insured losses from pure disasters sufficient to have a constructive influence 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 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.
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