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Now THIS is Some Awesome Flood data!

At HazardHub, we’re always working on ways to provide better, cooler, more meaningful data to our clients. It’s just how we roll.

Flood is a hot topic for insurers right now. Between new entrants trying to write private flood policies to current carriers trying to get a feel for their commercial flood risk, we’ve seen an enormous uptick in interest for accurate, actionable and affordable flood data.

One of the problems with FEMA flood data is that it’s not organized as well as it could be. It’s messy, it’s cryptic, and the data is located in a number of different data repositories – flood map data elements are in a number of different places, participating communities are in another and FIRM map metadata is in yet another location. What happens is a community doesn’t have a map or if you simply want a second look at flood that does not consider FEMA’s flood zones?

A deeper look at the Klamathon Fire

Natural disasters are by definition a bad thing. One of the problems of being in the hazard determination business is that for us to prove ourselves correct in our assessment, something really bad has happened. We take no joy in being right, as it comes due to the tragedy of someone else.

One of our competitors recently claimed they had successfully identified 61% of the properties in the Klamathon Fire as being at high or very high risk. That number is WAY too low. If you’re relying on that tool, you would be undercounting your potential risk by more than a third.

So what’s your data showing?

In looking at the Klamathon Fire we rated every property inside the burn perimeter as either high or very high.

HazardHub Releases Massive Data Update

We’ve been pretty quiet over the last month or so with our communications. It turns out that we’ve been heads-down and building out both improved and new datasets for your data enjoyment!

We’ve got a massive amount of new data under review by our data sciences team. In order to get you the best and freshest data possible, we’re breaking things up to not one but TWO data releases in July. We just went live with the first update today – here’s what it contains.

* Hydrant locations – We are now just over 8 million hydrant locations across the US, with a focus on the most populated states. Check and see if your address is covered at http://hazardhub.com/fire_hydrant/

* Fire Station Locations –

HazardHub releases first of its kind Sinkhole Susceptibility database

HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, has announced the release of Sinkhole Susceptibility, the nation’s first database that scores every address in the United States by the risk that the ground beneath them contains formations that lead to the ground collapsing upon itself – aka Sinkholes.

Currently, sinkhole tools are limited to “Distance to Known Sinkholes” calculations, like the one currently available from HazardHub. While effective, they only tell part of the story as new sinkholes will often appear far from where an existing sinkhole is located. For example, a sinkhole at the Villages, FL was more than 1.5 miles away from the nearest known sinkhole. Sinkhole Susceptibility shows that property as a “D” and highly susceptible to sinkholes. Another example is the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, infamously known for a sinkhole that swallowed seven Corvettes on display,

HazardHub releases major HydrantHubTM update

HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, has announced a major update HydrantHubTM, the nation’s first addressable database of fire hydrant locations. This growing database contains more than 5.2 Million hydrant locations across thousands of cities, states, counties and water districts across the United States. The new release contains 62% more hydrants than the prior version of HydrantHub, all of which are available via HazardHub’s Distance to Nearest Fire Hydrant web tool.

Distance to a fire hydrant is one of the most critical components to properly price homeowners and property insurance. Yet – too often – hydrant data has been unobtainable or relied on a homeowner’s best guess. Worse, companies that claim to have hydrant data often charge people to look at it.

When we set out to build HazardHub, we had three main goals in mind.

The first goal was to develop the best, most comprehensive property risk data available. Check!

The second was to make our data really easy to work with by making it visible. It’s why we have tools like Distance to Coast, Distance to Fire Station and Distance to the Nearest Fire Hydrantall available on our website. Unlike other providers of hazard data, we don’t hide – we put it out there for the world to see. It’s also why we let people try our API for free – we want users to love our data before ever committing to it.

The third – and most important – is that we want HazardHub to be a really easy company to work with.

Why is finding insurance so difficult?

So I’m looking to shop my homeowner, auto and umbrella policies…and the process for doing so is – frankly – frustratingly horrible. Each site has a super-detailed form that wants the same exact data you’ve typed into every other form on other websites. It maddening, mostly because it’s almost completely unnecessary.

This should be a relatively fast process, driven by SSN and address – which is how almost all of this data is stored.

One of the reasons is because the data industry has pounded insurance carriers into cost avoidance by charging a lot of $$ for every single inquiry – if you want to know the risk, you have to pay. At HazardHub, we think this is silly – #carriers can get our data and only pay us when they bind –

HazardHub hires Geospatial Expert Joe Litchfield as Chief Data Officer

SAN DIEGO, CA – HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, has announced that geospatial veteran Josef Litchfield has joined the company as Chief Data Officer.

Brady Foust, Chief Scientist of HazardHub, says “in order to expand HazardHub’s science and point data, we needed someone who is skilled at geospatial data acquisition. We’re bursting at the seams with ideas about improving hazard data. Joe’s experience, expertise, and skill with geospatial data is a welcome addition to the HazardHub team. “

Joe adds “I am incredibly excited to join HazardHub. They are far and away the most innovative and aggressive company in the geospatial hazard data market. I’ve been impressed with what HazardHub has been able to accomplish in the last year and look forward to accelerating HazardHub’s fantastic growth. My goal is to make HazardHub’s complex geospatial risk data easy to consume,

The Three Little Pigs teach Risk Mitigation

The three most famous houses for risk exposure are the one made of straw, the one made of sticks, and the one made of bricks. Occupied by our friends, the three little pigs.
These three houses face extreme local straight-line wind exposure courtesy of the Big Bad Wolf. The key lesson taught by this fable is that the better prepared you are for risk exposure, the more likely it is that you’ll come out on the bright side after the risk has passed. Unfortunately, we see it every day that some children and many adults did not heed this moral.
Enter HazardHub.
While HazardHub does not provide Wolf Based Wind Scores (WolfHubTM) we DO provide risk scores on just about every other bad thing that can happen to your home or business. We are strong believers in the power of mitigation.

How do you get a better handle on Storm Surge?

We’ve been hearing a LOT about Storm Surge and the devastating impact of surge for both Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

While we won’t know the damages from either hurricane for awhile (although the damages of both storms are estimated in the tens of billions), we can help to answer one question – how can communities, insurers, and individuals be better prepared for the risk from storm surge?

The key step is to be aware. Knowing the risk of storm surge for a specific property – and mitigating those risks while the weather is good – can go a long way to making sure your property minimizes storm surge damages.

Storm surge models have improved drastically over the last several years, as topographical maps and satellite imagery have improved. Our SurgeMax model is one of the newest,