Insurers urged to share cat models to help map flood risk

Catastrophe models that Canadian insurers use to predict flood damage should be open-sourced, free and accessible to everyone, says the chief executive of an open source cat modelling platform.

A common theme at the C4 conference in Ottawa, organized by Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ), is that Canadian insurers, governments, academic researchers, scientists and others need to share more information to help identify areas prone to flood losses and storm weather losses.

If everyone is using different data sets to determine flood risk, and in the absence of standard data sets and flood maps, there may be confusion or disagreement between governments and insurers about the value of proposed flood prevention initiatives (a hypothetical example would be building a seawall along a shoreline in Toronto).

“The solution is really, really clear,” said Dickie Whitaker, chief executive of the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework. “The solution has to be that there are national data sets, public assets, that should be available for everyone to use.”

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