RMS Develops Building-Specific Risk Data for City Centers

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) has contracted with The
Sanborn Map Company to develop building-level geodata for use in its
portfolio management and underwriting applications.

The new data will allow insurers and reinsurers to pinpoint risk
accumulations within city centers down to the level of specific
buildings. The data will also provide enhanced exposure information for RMS’ recently released U.S. Terrorism Risk model.

The data will include digital imagery for downtown areas of major U.S. cities at 0.5-foot pixel resolution. Information gathered from this
process will be combined with building attributes from Sanborn’s
library of more than 12,000 maps and from on-the-ground field surveys. The resulting database will include key underwriting attributes such as building height, number of stories, square footage, construction and occupancy class, and year built. In addition, address and building name information will be provided for each structure to support building-level geocoding.

Sanborn CEO Pankaj Desai noted, “This project brings together Sanborn’s expertise in photogrammetric mapping with our extensive archives of insurance-related attribute data. Insurance maps were the first product our company offered when it opened its doors more than 130 years ago. We are excited to partner with RMS to bring this data to the forefront of new applications for managing urban risk accumulations.”

“We are applying the latest technology to accomplish what underwriters used to do with push-pins and paper maps,” added Bill Tuttle, vice president of product marketing at RMS.

“The data will enable companies to go beyond existing high resolution geocoding, allowing them to identify exposure at a specific building level, accumulate risk across multiple lines of business and use that information to set capacity management criteria. This will improve risk management data, for both natural catastrophe perils and for terrorism risk.”