Natural Hazard Databases

Although you can obtain generic hazard risk and regulatory compliance data, the degree of accuracy and usability varies widely. Our staff of Ph.D.-level geographers and scientists developed comprehensive databases providing reliable information to support your decision-making processes.

Built using a proprietary methodology at a granular detail level, our databases deliver the information accuracy you need. Since we own and maintain these databases, we guarantee you’ll receive up-to-date information, accurate data-layer alignment and a single contact point for support.

Understand Earthquake Risk at the Property Level

The United States has averaged more than 3,000 individual earthquake events every year since 1999. Our earthquake risk database incorporates current earthquake science and information, producing a probabilistic risk database covering all 50 states. The modeled database accounts for peak ground acceleration (ground shaking), earthquake faults, geologic structure and soil type to produce the earthquake-hazard risk estimate.

Integrated into CATUM, our insurance solution, the earthquake risk database enables you to accurately locate and assess insured properties for earthquake risks.

Understand Your Exposure to Flood Risk

Flooding is the nation’s leading cause of property damage. To accurately assess flood risk, our basic flood data package incorporates three key elements:

• FEMA flood zone designation
• Whether the property is within or outside a high-risk flood zone (Special Flood Hazard Area)
• Straight-line proximity to nearest Special Flood Hazard Area

We start with the industry’s most comprehensive database of digital flood maps and related data, then continuously update the database to reflect FEMA’s most recent studies, letters of map amendment and other necessary changes. We regularly review and test all data to maintain stringent quality standards.

Flood Risk Score Provides a New Perspective on Flood Risk

The majority of underwriting guidelines rely on whether a property is in or out of a federally designated flood zone. Yet historically, 25 to 30 percent of flood insurance claims come from properties outside those zones.

Although federal flood maps remain useful in limited situations, underwriting private insurance requires a more advanced and precise risk assessment that identifies higher-risk properties outside designated flood zones and lower-risk properties inside flood zones. The assessment includes key risk factors, such as nearby levees and dams. Flood Risk Score provides this advanced level of risk assessment on riverine and coastal surge flooding.

Primarily used as an advanced tool to enhance underwriting capabilities, you can also apply Flood Risk Score to policies and portfolios, offering enhanced aggregate analysis capabilities.

Understand Hail Risk

For most insurers, hail represents the largest single-loss peril in total annual claims. Damaging hail (hail larger than .75 inches in diameter) is generated by major thunderstorms and causes extensive damage to residential and commercial property. Using source data from NOAA National Climate Data Center, our climate, statistic and geographic experts model point hail observations at a granular level. This provides underwriters with risk category and annual frequency of occurrence information, which is useful in determining policy hail risks and setting rates.

Advanced Storm Surge Analytics Enhance Your Coastal Risk Profile

More than 53 percent of the U.S. population lives in a coastal county, where exposure to extreme weather systems is increasing annually. To reduce their risk exposure, property and casualty companies concerned about coastal exposure are implementing strategies to reduce risk—strategies that are often broad and range from statewide new-policy moratoriums, mandates against issuing policies within a certain distance of the coastline, or pulling out of coastal areas completely.

At CoreLogic, we provide increased granularity by combining five data sets—coastal surge risk, hurricane propensity, coastal water feature, mainland determination and elevation—into an understandable, easy-to-use scoring method.  We provide a more accurate, property-based methodology to hazard risk information that improves underwriting by increasing your understanding of coastal risk exposure—without resorting to broad-brush exclusion strategies.

Coastal Risk allows you to improve underwriting decisions, as well as:

• Reduce loss potential and adverse selection over traditional insurance practices
• Understand your potential for surge loss
• Determine the potential for hurricane losses resulting from storm surge

We can provide coastal surge and hurricane propensity files for the Atlantic and Gulf coastal areas exclusively, while other data sets cover all coastal waters and the Great Lakes.

Wildfire Analytics Provide Property-Level Assessment of Wildfire Risk

Increasing residential development near or adjacent to the wildland urban interface (WUI) means increased wildfire home losses. Cost estimates to protect these structures are estimated at more than $1 billion each year. To reduce loss exposure, you must ensure that policy premiums and underwriting guidelines correctly reflect potential risk.

Our wildfire risk database identifies an individual property's risk vulnerability, providing the information you need for accurate underwriting. Developed using our modeling expertise and the recognized best practices of government and fire research laboratories, our database identifies property-risk potential by scoring the risk based on the property's distance to high brush fuel zones and the distance to the WUI.

The wildfire risk database consists of two key data layers:

Brushfire Fuel Rank

The Brushfire Fuel Rank data model assesses relative brushfire risk based on four factors: slope, aspect, vegetation (fuel) and vegetation composition. The mathematical combination of these four variables results in a numeric range of values that is subsequently divided into four risk categories: very high, high, moderate or low. This model simplifies risk assessment and provides reliable information needed to accurately determine brushfire risk for a defined area or specific location.

FIREbreak+

FIREbreak+ is the first comprehensive tool for accurately assessing brushfire risk along the WUI. It identifies a policy's proximity to high-risk vegetation and its residential density class, helping you make informed risk determinations for AK (populated areas only), CA, CO, FL, ID, MT, NV, NM, OR, UT, WA and WY.

Single Wildfire Risk Score

Single Wildfire Risk Score rates properties on a 0-100 scale, giving you increased flexibility in determining risk categories, as well as an opportunity to utilize the data in other applications.

Based on our statistical analysis of thousands of wildfire home losses, the four contributors to wildfire loss are weighted to generate a single risk score. The risk scale offers you the option to create a proprietary set of conditional rules, enabling you to:

• Accurately write policies without extensive on-site investigations
• Carefully consider policies in areas where the brushfire risk is disproportionately high due to location characteristics
• Flag locations for on-site inspection based on on- and off-property brushfire risk factors 

Understand Damaging Wind Risk

Wind events account for millions of dollars in residential and commercial property damage each year. Our damaging winds dataset provides an accurate risk score and frequency for the three major types of damaging winds—straight-line, hurricane and tornado—as well as an aggregate score of all three. Utilizing NOAA's damaging wind event data from 1980 to the present, our climatological, statistical and geographic experts model point-wind observations to a 10-kilometer grid normalized by population density.

With the damaging winds database, you gain a clearer picture of wind-loss potential.  You can also use the database to identify lower-risk zones within large geographic areas, determine relative risk potential in smaller areas and identify low-risk opportunities for the 48 contiguous states and Washington D.C.

Understand Tornado Risk

Tornadoes are among nature’s most violent storms, causing massive destruction within seconds.  With wind speeds reaching 300 miles per hour, tornadoes can remain stationary or move quickly, potentially creating paths of damage more than a mile wide and 50 miles long.

With tornadoes possible in every state, it’s important to understand your relative potential for tornado loss and risk concentration. We use the latest meteorological science, historical data and current records to provide the best tornado risk assessment possible.

Sinkhole Risk in Florida Underscores the Need for CoreLogic Hazard Model

At CoreLogic, we've developed the most comprehensive measurement of sinkhole risk. Using advanced parcel-level geocoding and our patented ParcelPoint^® Technology, CoreLogic scientists can accurately identify a property's proximity to known sinkholes as well as provide a property-level risk assessment—low to extreme risk—where certain rock types are susceptible to dissolution by changes in water flow patterns.

CoreLogic identified known sinkholes in Pinellas, Hillsboro and Pasco counties.