News

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,

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.

JMI Reports Chooses HazardHub to Provide Hazard and Property Information for its QuickVUE Automated Reports

HazardHub, the nation’s fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data, and JMI Reports, a leading insurance property surveying company have announced that HazardHub’s proprietary geographic hazard data and property characteristics will now be available through JMI Reports’ exclusive new report, QuickVUE.

Mike Ling, JMI’s Vice President of Client Relations stated that “JMI Reports Inc. is proud to announce that we have partnered with HazardHub. While researching data providers for our new and innovative QuickVUE product, HazardHub quickly rose to the top of our search. JMI values quality business relationships and it was evident that Hazard Hub looked to be a valued partner rather than just a data vendor. HazardHub’s prior data experience and their commitment to innovate by providing the highest quality and most comprehensive data in the marketplace made them the right choice as a business partner for JMI Reports.”

The Commercial Impact Of Hurricane Harvey On Harris County, TX

By identifying all the businesses in Harris County, TX (Houston area), based on location, and mapping those locations against FEMA’s floodplain maps as well as taking into account other elevation criteria, we are able to quantify the impact of flooding and storm surge from Hurricane Harvey. By looking at business revenue at the affected locations as well as the affected businesses debt and bankruptcy risk, the effects of Harvey become clearer. We also identified home-based businesses to illustrate the extensive exposure of that segment of commercial enterprises.

Bankruptcy-Exposure

The above table shows the number of businesses expected to be “wet” in Harris County. The 84,562 businesses identified account for 23 percent of the approximately 375,890 active businesses in Houston as of the end of July 2017.

Of those affected, 55 percent are at a high risk of bankruptcy,