AIR Worldwide Launches Inland Flood Model for Germany

AIR Worldwide (AIR), a catastrophe risk modeling firm, released an inland flood model for Germany that determines the likelihood of flood losses from all types of storms.

The model provides insurers and reinsurers with a tool for managing inland flood risk — allowing companies to make informed underwriting decisions, to monitor and quantify aggregate concentrations of flood risk across their portfolios, and to assess the potential impact of less frequent but large loss events.

The flood model includes on-floodplain flooding, which covers a river network extending more than 160,000 kilometers and comprising more than 30,000 stream links, and off-floodplain flooding, modeled according to the specifics of more than 35,000 small catchments (drainage areas) in Germany.

The off-floodplain model accounts for elevation, runoff, drainage backups, and facility aging at each modeled location.

Among the factors influencing the extent of property damage from flood are building characteristics such as construction material, building height, and basements. The model can also account for site-specific flood defense systems often deployed by large industrial facilities. Based on engineering analyses, findings from published research, damage surveys conducted by AIR, and insurance loss data, AIR engineers have developed flood-specific damage functions, or relationships between flood depth and the amount of damage caused to a given building/property, for 34 different construction classes and 50 occupancy classes in Germany.

Source: AIR Worldwide