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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.

TRIA’s Impact on Workers Comp

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Because of the significant financial impact of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress created the Federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). Its purpose is to provide a financial backstop to the insurance industry that would cap losses in the event of another large-scale terrorist event. TRIA was initially set to expire at the end of 2005, but it has been extended twice and is now set to expire Dec. 31, 2014.

When most people think of TRIA, they think of property insurance. Without TRIA, many high-profile properties would be difficult to insure in the commercial marketplace. However, TRIA also plays an important role in workers’ compensation coverage, and its pending expiration is already impacting some renewals.

Workers’ compensation insurers are particularly concerned about large accumulations of employees in small areas, also known as employee concentrations.

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When carriers model employee accumulations, they not only look at a single employer’s concentrations, but also their aggregate accumulation exposure for all their policyholders in a particular zip code or city and in some cases across multiple correlated lines of business. Because workers’ compensation underwriters are required to provide terrorism coverage by law, the only way to limit their exposure is to reduce the amount of capacity they offer.

If TRIA is allowed to expire or is modified significantly, employers in certain cities and industries with large employee concentrations will likely experience capacity shortages.

In fact, the uncertainty around TRIA’s reauthorization is already leading some workers’ compensation carriers to decline or non-renew risks in certain geographical areas, or ask for large rate increases.

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The healthcare, public entity, higher education, and financial sectors are particularly affected by employee concentration issues at the moment.

To mitigate the impact of TRIA’s uncertainty, employers should differentiate their risk. Since both insurers and reinsurers use catastrophic models to estimate their loss potentials, it is critical that employers provide the highest quality of exposure data to help distinguish their risk profiles from their peers.

Additionally, companies with multiple shifts or those that operate in a campus setting should make sure to report both the total number of employees and the number of employees working during peak shifts—as well as the actual buildings where the employees are located. The number of employees working during peak shifts is the actual exposure to a terrorist event, not the total number of employees.

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Also, companies with a large percentage of their workforce in the field or telecommuting, rather than in the office where their payroll is assigned, should give this information to insurers. Providing very detailed information can help overcome some potential pitfalls of the catastrophic models and better reflect an employer’s exposure to catastrophic losses.

Employers with a large concentration of workers, especially those in major metropolitan areas, should be prepared to provide the following information to underwriters:

  • Employee marital or dependency status, including dates of birth for dependents.
  • Employee telecommuting/hospitality practices and impact on concentration.
  • Physical security of the building, including information about guards, surveillance cameras, parking areas, and HVAC protections.
  • How access to the building is controlled.
  • Construction of the building and location of the offices.
  • Management policies around workplace violence, weapons, and employment screening.
  • Employee security procedures.
  • Emergency response/crisis management plans and procedures.
  • Fire/life safety program.
  • A list of security staff.

As we move into 2014 without Congressional action on TRIA, the reaction of the marketplace is expected to become more pronounced. It is imperative that employers prepare to address the concentration issues with their carriers. This will help lessen the impact of these concerns and position employers to receive optimal terms on their risk management programs.

Low Insurance Impact Expected from Haiyan

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Damage in the Philippines from Typhoon Haiyan is widespread, with new information emerging daily. Insured losses, however, are expected to be low, with the greatest impact on smaller reinsurers, according to insurance industry reports.

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A.M. Best said in a briefing that it expects insured losses to be minimal, as non-life insurance is less than 1% of the country’s gross domestic product.

“Insured losses in the Philippines will be spread across many segments, including per­sonal lines, fire and property, and marine hull. Fire/property and marine hull will be well reinsured through the major global reinsurers and through Lloyd’s, which will also absorb some marine losses on a primary basis. Net losses to primary insurers will be limited, and some commercial losses also may be covered through captives or other forms of self-insurance,” the report said.

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A.M. Best expects Haiyan to be an “earnings event for reinsurers” – more substantial for smaller, regional reinsurers. While it is expected to have minor impact on larger global companies, it is “yet another loss on top of recent catastrophes in Europe.”

In an update, Dr. Robert Hartwig of the Insurance Information Institute said that economic damages will be significant, with Haiyan having a “major negative impact on the Philippine economy.”

He noted two reasons why insured losses from Haiyan are likely to be low:

• The storm did not have a direct impact on Manila, the capital and largest city in the Philippines, well to the north of the track of Typhoon Haiyan.

• The Philippines is a small market for property/casualty insurance, with premiums of just $1.23 billion written in 2012. This amounts to $12.70 per person, compared to $1,223.90 per person in the U.S. “Even compared with the rest of Asia, the penetration of insurance in the Philippines is relatively low,” Hartwig said in the report, adding that per capita premiums in Asia were $91.90 in 2012.

In 2012 the Philippine’s GDP per capital was ranked 124th out of 184 countries by the International Monetary Fund, he said. The Philippine economy has grown steadily, however—at an annual rate of 7.

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5% as of the second-quarter of 2013—and should become better insured in the future.

Philippines Life and Nonlife Insurance Premiums, 2012

 

Direct premiums written
Nonlife premiums *

$1,231
Life premiums

$2,265
Total premiums

$3,496
Percent of total world premiums

0.08%

* Includes accident and health insurance.

Source: Swiss Re, sigma, No. 3/2013.

Supertyphoon Haiyan Devastates Philippines

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Supertyphoon Haiyan strikes the Philippines

Supertyphoon Haiyan hit the Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 10,000 residents dead and hundreds of thousands without reliable food, shelter or water. One of the strongest storms ever recorded, Haiyan’s winds surpassed 140 miles per hour, bringing record storm surges. The full extent of the damage remains uncertain, with communication and transportation severely restricted.

The World Bank has called the Philippines one of the most hazard-prone countries in the world. Closed roads and airports restricted aid efforts after Supertyphoon Haiyan, and communication failures posed some of the greatest challenges to both assessing and recovering from damage.

“Under normal circumstances, even in a typhoon, you’d have some local infrastructure up and some businesses with which you can contract,” Praveen Agrawal, the World Food Program’s Philippines representative and country director, told the New York Times. “Being as strong as it was, it was very much like a tsunami. It wiped out everything. It’s like starting from scratch” in terms of delivering the aid, he said.

The United Nations has set aside over $300 million to help with the country’s recovery from Haiyan over the next six months, and three dozen individual nations and international organizations have pledged financial and humanitarian assistance. The United States recalled thousands of sailors from shore leave back to the USS George Washington, a massive aircraft carrier currently docked in Hong Kong, to use its 80 aircraft to help deliver supplies and evacuate victims in the Philippines’ hardest-hit islands.

Yet with the broad scope of damage to critical infrastructure, the process has been slow. In the major city of Tacloban, for example, the traffic control tower at one of the country’s biggest airports was destroyed, forcing all aircraft to land by sight, further slowing distribution of food and water. Officials opened smaller airstrips, focusing on safely reopening transportation routes as the hundreds of thousands of evacuees continue to face extreme water shortage. This shortage further compounds the dangers authorities face in recovery, as health officials grow more concerned about water-borne diseases. Most notably, the lack of clean drinking and bathing water in crowded evacuation centers brings risk of diarrhea, leptospirosis and dengue.

Officials are looking forward while managing the catastrophic fallout. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima acknowledged that the destruction wrought by the disaster on an area that contributes 12.5% to gross domestic product could shave off as much as a full percentage point to economic growth next year, when the government targets GDP expansion of at least 6.5%. He is hopeful that the adverse effect on growth will be cushioned, if not offset, by the reconstruction spending.

“From a fiscal standpoint, we do have fiscal space to spend for reconstruction. The estimates are preliminary, but we need to invest significantly on infrastructure,” Mr. Purisima said.

The New York Times reported:

HSBC Global Research said that the typhoon probably destroyed half the sugar cane production areas in Leyte Province, and that all told, 3.5 percent of the nation’s sugar cane output was probably lost. It also warned of inflationary shocks to the Philippine economy in the coming months, as supply chains are disrupted.

But given the general health of the Philippine economy and the fact that the typhoon affected geographic areas and sectors like agriculture that are not major drivers of the nation’s output, HSBC said, “The economic impact will be limited.”

Citi Research estimated that infrastructure damage will probably run into billions of pesos, exceeding $70 million.

In Warsaw on Monday, some delegates at United Nations talks on a global climate treaty suggested that global warming was responsible for making Haiyan such a devastating storm. Naderev Saño, the chief representative of the Philippines at the conference, told the New York Times, “What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness; the climate crisis is madness.”

Scientists cannot be certain of the overall impact of climate change on severe weather like hurricanes and typhoons, but have noted that more powerful storms will continue as the climate changes. With winds of at least 140 miles an hour, Typhoon Haiyan is considered one of the strongest storms to make landfall. “As you warm the climate, you basically raise the speed limit on hurricanes,” said M.I.T. atmospheric scientist Kerry A. Emanuel.

The powerful storm surges recorded are also likely part of a new reality in major storms. “When you strip everything else away, we’re seeing a general rise in sea level,” James P. Kossin, atmospheric scientist at the National Climatic Data Center, told the Times. “There’s no question that storm surge is going to be compounded.”