Category Archives: Environmental Risk

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Winter Weather Third-Largest Cause of Cat Losses

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Winter Snow Storm

Weather damage never goes out of season. According to a new report from the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.), winter storms are historically the third-largest cause of catastrophe losses, behind only hurricanes and tornadoes.

“Winter storms accounted for 7.

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1 percent of all insured catastrophe losses between 1993 and 2012, placing it third behind hurricanes and tropical storms (40 percent) and tornadoes (36 percent) as the costliest natural disasters,” said I.I.I. President Robert Hartwig.

Insured Catastrophe Losses

Between 1993 and 2012, winter storms resulted in about $27.8 billion in insured losses—or $1.4 billion per year, on average, according to Property Claims Service for Verisk Insurance Solutions.

A December ice storm in North Texas left at least $30 million in residential insured losses in its wake, the Insurance Council of Texas reported. This figure does not include estimated damage to vehicles or government property, nor does it take into account the significant municipal expense of safety or cleanup measures. Dallas County alone spent 0,000 to 0,000 just to battle slick roads, according to conservative estimates from County Judge Clay Jenkins.

He told Insurance Journal that, while sanding and salting roads constituted some of the county’s greatest efforts, the biggest cost came from closing offices, including the court system. Weather-related shutdown resulted in lost productivity of about .

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5 million, he said.

Nation-wide, December weather caused total economic and insured losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars and claimed 29 lives, Aon Benfield reported.

But 2013 should have made some fair-weather friends in the insurance industry. Last year, according to Munich Re, direct overall losses caused by global disasters amounted to around $125 billion and insured losses of around $31 billion. While exceptionally costly, these were below the 10-year averages of $184 billion and $56 billion, respectively.

Weather Risks Often Overlooked

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Unpredictable weather is a risk that can’t be put off or ignored. In fact, insurer payouts for weather-related catastrophes rose from $15 billion a year between 1980 and 1989 to a staggering $70 billion annually between 2010 and 2013, a study found.

While major weather events are a focus of businesses, small events can still have a big impact, according to The Weather Business: How Companies Can Protect Against Increasing Weather Volatility by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty.

Even though weather volatility is shown to be rising globally, organizations are still failing to protect their revenue from the risks of changes in temperature, snowfall, wind levels, rainfall and too much sun, the report found. Changes in weather can also impact a number of industries including construction, energy, retail, tourism, food, distribution and transport.

Bad weather, however, is no longer an excuse for company stakeholders. Analysts, lending and rating agencies are increasingly looking at whether weather risks are included in a company’s risk management program, the study found.

Weather risk management can help companies hedge the risk posed by fluctuations in weather, similar to how companies already combat the threats of interest rate and foreign currency exchange movements, the report said.

Midwest Tornado Insured Losses Could Top $1B

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A series of tornadoes in the Midwest on Sunday that killed six, levelled homes and businesses and left tens of thousands without power may top $1 billion in insured losses, according to risk modeller RMS.

The New York Times reported that on Nov. 18, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn declared seven counties disaster areas and said he would seek relief funding from state and federal agencies. He also said the series of tornadoes were the deadliest to occur in the state in November.

Matthew Nielsen, director of model product management at RMS said in an email that while damage estimates are far from final, “There is a good chance that Sunday’s outbreak will likely rank as one of the top five most significant November outbreaks since 1950.”

The magnitude and severity of the tornado outbreak was driven by two factors, he said, “Unseasonably strong thermodynamic instability and unusually strong wind shear throughout the depth of the atmosphere.”

Robert P. Hartwig, Ph.D., president of the Insurance Information Institute said from the Chicago airport, en route to assess the tornado damage first hand, that there is “No question that it will at least be the second costliest tornado event of the year.” The largest event this year was the Moore, Okla., tornadoes, which approached $1.6 billion in insured losses. By comparison, damage from the Midwest tornadoes is spread over a wider area, impacting Illinois, Michigan and Indiana.

“There are thousands of damaged structures throughout the states that were hit—residential and commercial,” he said. “What’s difficult to tell at this point is the extent of commercial damage and that can really drive up the losses. Not only are commercial structures more expensive, but there is often a business interruption component as well.”

He explained that insured losses for tornadoes are typically higher than those for floods. Because there was no flooding involved, more of the losses would be covered by insurance, meaning a faster recovery. “The vast majority of property owners here are going to have insurance coverage. Uninsured losses may include some business interruption loss, vehicles that didn’t carry comprehensive coverage and uninsured structures,” he said.

As is generally the case after tornadoes, “Most people will be getting checks [from their insurers] very quickly, which will help them with temporary living expenses. It will also help them make initial repairs more quickly and provide funds for debris removal so that rebuilding can start,” Hartwig said.

GOCE Satellite Makes Fiery Fall to Earth

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Bill Chater: GOCE Re-entry

As captured – and tweeted – by skywatcher Bill Chater in the photo above, the European Space Agency’s Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) re-entered the atmosphere on Sunday, making an uncontrolled fall after running out of fuel last month.

Launched in 2009, GOCE mapped variations in Earth’s gravitational field to help scientists better understand how gravity affects phenomena like ocean circulation and sea level. As Slate reported, the satellite only spent about a quarter of its time over land, so the odds were high for a safe crash into the ocean, but when an object weighing over a ton is in a free-fall to Earth, the risk is noteworthy.

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While scientists knew that most of the satellite would burn up during approach, its 25 to 45 pieces of debris weighing up to 200 pounds each pose a significant threat. Without any means of controlling where it would land, officials from the ESA, Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee and United States Strategic Command closely monitored the massive “space debris” until it fell into the South Atlantic off the tip of South America, south of the Falkland Islands.

Since 2008, United Nations guidelines have attempted to reduce the danger of space debris, and scientists now build extra fuel and thrusters into space-bound objects to help control re-entry.

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GOCE had already been designed when the guidelines were issued, but future iterations would likely include these failsafes.

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The risk of uncontrolled space debris is increasingly common, however. On average, one piece of tracked “space junk” falls every day and one intact defunct spacecraft or old rocket body comes back every week, BBC reported. Renowned astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson was quite thorough in pointing out that major space debris disasters like the one depicted in Gravity are scientifically questionable at best, but the everyday risks merit serious consideration as increasing what we send into space increases what we can expect to fall back. There are currently about 750 live satellites circling Earth and an estimated 500,000 pieces of space debris in orbit, dating as far back as the 1958 Vanguard 1 research satellite.