ICEYE announces beta release of Wildfire Insights
ICEYE, a provider of natural catastrophe solutions and insights, has announced the Beta release of its Wildfire Insights product.
According to the company ICEYE Wildfire Insights is the first product of its kind. It provides building-level impact data for a wildfire event in near real-time based on satellite imagery and a combination of advanced analytics and machine learning. The product captures data for any wildfire that impacts communities throughout the United States.
As part of the Beta phase, ICEYE will invite select insurers to participate in the final testing of the product functionality prior to the planned general availability release in the third quarter of this year.
ICEYE’s Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) constellation provides the unique capability of being able to monitor events on the ground irrespective of atmospheric conditions. The satellites generate high-resolution imagery of building damage through clouds, at night, and most importantly through smoke.
ICEYE Wildfire Insights incorporates a monitoring application for all ongoing wildfire events across the US. When an event exceeds a given threshold based on size and proximity to a community, the ICEYE team begins data capture of satellite imagery which is then overlaid with building footprints and analysed to indicate each destroyed vs non-damaged building within the wildfire.
The hazard information is provided to insurance companies within 24 hours of the initial analysis of the wildfire and at 24-hour intervals until the wildfire ceases to impact additional buildings.
Insurers will use the ICEYE Wildfire Insights’ data to support multiple critical business functions including managing event response activities, and sizing portfolio loss. ICEYE Wildfire Insight will inform field adjuster allocation and deployment for more efficient and effective event response. Insurers will proactively communicate with policyholders and event response partners as a wildfire is developing and in the immediate aftermath. The firm claims that insurers will be able to process and pay wildfire claims faster than ever before.
“Wildfire events are rapidly increasing in severity and frequency across the US,” said Penelope KourKouli, ICEYE Wildfire Insights Product Manager. “Insurers struggle to respond because they don’t have actionable insured building damage data in a timely, reliable manner. Traditional methods to gain this vital information often take several days if not weeks.
“The ICEYE Wildfire Insights product enables users to access ground-level hazard data for wildfire events in the US within hours of the damage from the event. Through our SAR constellation and data analysis capabilities, we provide a level of hazard insight, and in timeframes, that were not previously possible. This is a critical development in the evolution of how the industry addresses the growing wildfire peril and we are excited to work with insurers during the Beta testing phase ahead of our launch.”
