AIR's Touchstone to Integrate Third-Party Catastrophe Data and Models
BOSTON / ACCESSWIRE / April 9, 2014 / Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) today announced that, due to the widespread and successful market adoption of its Touchstone(R) software platform, a large number of third-party suppliers have chosen to provide their data and models through Touchstone. Those third-party suppliers include Ambiental, ERN, EuroTempest, IHS Inc., KatRisk, Met Office, PERILS, and SSBN. Touchstone creates a truly open platform for insurers and reinsurers to manage their exposures and catastrophe risk. This integration will allow users to assess and manage risk across a wide range of perils, including flood, terrorism, earthquake, tropical cyclone, and other perils. AIR is a member of the Verisk Insurance Solutions group at Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK).
"Touchstone was designed to be an open platform, allowing clients to import third-party hazard layers or run multiple alternative models on a single platform for a more complete view of risk," said Ming Lee, president and CEO of AIR Worldwide. "Because we have not adopted a 'usage fee' or 'pay-per-click' pricing model for Touchstone, availability of third-party models and hazard layers will encourage our clients to run more analyses, not fewer, to explore and compare alternative views and truly own their risk. Having those models and hazard layers available from within a single platform will also significantly improve workflow and productivity."
"We are very pleased that AIR is enabling integration of our many flood hazard maps through its Touchstone platform," said Guy Morrow, cofounder of KatRisk. "This will help deliver new sources of data to a much broader audience, which is particularly important for a complex peril such as flood. We hope that companies using our data through Touchstone will be able to achieve a much broader view of risk."
"We applaud AIR for allowing our models and hazard data for Mexico and Latin America to run alongside its global suite of models in Touchstone," said Eduardo Reinoso, CEO at ERN. "There are many operational benefits to providing models from multiple developers on a single platform, including significantly reduced data preparation and processing time, easier viewing, and comparison of multiple results."
In addition to continuing discussions with other third-party data and model providers, AIR is also cementing links and enabling closer integration with other major industry organizations, such as the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) and PERILS. AIR was a founding member and key contributor to GEM, which is developing an open-source platform for sharing data, models, and knowledge about seismic risk assessment. Additionally, PERILS and AIR already allow their mutual clients to seamlessly integrate the PERILS Industry Exposure Database (IED) and event sets generated using this IED.
"We look forward to collaborating with other data and model providers as we continue to offer the most complete exposure and catastrophe management solution via Touchstone," said Dr. Milan Simic, senior vice president and managing director of international operations at AIR Worldwide. "Our approach - to empower companies to make decisions based on their free choice and specific needs, whether they are scientific, technical, actuarial or technology-based - is being met with enthusiasm by our clients."
About AIR Worldwide
AIR Worldwide (AIR) is the scientific leader and most respected provider of risk modeling software and consulting services. AIR founded the catastrophe modeling industry in 1987 and today models the risk from natural catastrophes and terrorism in more than 90 countries. More than 400 insurance, reinsurance, financial, corporate, and government clients rely on AIR software and services for catastrophe risk management, insurance-linked securities, detailed site-specific wind and seismic engineering analyses, and agricultural risk management. AIR is a member of the Verisk Insurance Solutions group at Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) and is headquartered in Boston with additional offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.air-worldwide.com.
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For more information, contact:
Kevin Long
AIR Worldwide
+1-617-267-6645
[email protected]
HUG#1775665