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Ventus Risk partners with HazardHub for location-specific data

SAN DIEGO CA – HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, is pleased to announce that Ventus Risk Management (www.ventusrisk.com) has selected HazardHub as a provider of location-based hazard information.

In an industry slow to embrace change or technology, Ventus stands apart. The Company’s use of applied technology at every stage of the process transforms the landscape of insurance risk transfer, updating and streamlining a traditionally archaic business model while improving risk selection and analysis. By leveraging its proprietary technology, Ventus is fast becoming a market leader that sets a new standard for underwriting and managing catastrophe-exposed insurance risk.

Stuart Mercer, President of Ventus, says “at Ventus, we use technology to enhance the underwriting process. HazardHub shares our mission by providing highly-detailed, location-specific data via an API. They’re accurate, fast and flexible.

HazardHub Releases Frozen Pipe Score, Ice Dam Score and enhanced Weather Variables

An average of a quarter of a million American families have one or more rooms in their homes ruined and their lives disrupted each winter by water pipes freezing and breaking. Until today, the insurance industry has struggled to get their collective hands around this multi-billion dollar risk.

Introducing the Frozen Pipe Score and Ice Dam score from HazardHub!

Frozen Pipe Score

Numerous studies have shown the “threshold” temperature for frozen pipes is when the temperature falls below 20°F for more than 24 hours in areas where freezing is not normally expected and pipes are unprotected in crawl spaces and attics. In areas that experience long periods of winter weather, pipes are generally better protected, but freezing pipes can still occur if bitter temperatures persist for several days. The problem is, therefore,

HazardHub Announces New and Updated data !

It’s with great excitement that we release our latest and greatest datasets. This release features updates on several existing databases, as well as two new databases and an updated data schema! Here are the details –

HazardHub Releases Enhanced Property Characteristics

At HazardHub, data is our passion. We aim to provide as much data as possible to make the insurance process both way faster and way MORE accurate.

The one key element we thought we could improve upon? Property characteristic data. We currently provide county assessor data and – while it does a great job at proving things important for the assessor (like beds, baths, and sq footage) – it does not do such a great job at proving the level of detail that makes a property come alive. Of course, at HazardHub we love a good data challenge. We did some digging and determined that we could be better. A LOT better.

Introducing Enhanced Property Data from HazardHub – our data source that combines county tax assessor data with in-depth real estate transaction data to give you unprecedented insight into the characteristics of an individual property.

HazardHub Releases Advanced Wildfire Model

SAN DIEGO – HazardHub has launched its advanced Wildfire Model for the United States. The new model represents an incredible improvement over current wildfire models, combining fuel load, urban/wildland interface data, rainfall data, wind data, satellite imagery, and known wildfire perimeters to create the highest resolution, most detailed wildfire assessment ever available.

Brady Foust, Chief Science Officer at HazardHub, said “I have been developing wildfire models for many years. I have never felt more confident in a wildfire model. The HazardHub Advanced Wildfire Model captures and concentrates risk in the areas that are most susceptible to wildfire while resisting the temptation to simply label an entire area as dangerous.”

Foust adds “most static models concentrate on fuel load and distance to the Wildland/Urban Interface (WUI). These are important variables, but we add an additional five: 1) fire season rainfall;

Insuretech Hartford Pitch Night

Last week we traveled to beautiful Hartford, CT (where the Connecticut River was REALLY high) for a series of meetings, including participating in the Insuretech Hartford Pitch event. We were one of nine startups, presenting to a large and engaged crowd from insurance companies all around the Hartford area.

Frankly, it was a LONG day in Hartford. It seemed like the entire day was one long “here’s who HazardHub is” presentation. It’s great but it’s tiring. So when pitch time rolled around, Bob poured that entire day into 5 sizzling minutes of pitch magic (at least, that’s how he described it.) You can judge for yourself, as the pitch was captured in a video!

Once the pitch was done, we thought “that was fun! Let’s mingle, watch a few pitches and grab a bite to eat.”

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,