Wildfire Conflagration
Assessing the Risk of Structure-to-Structure Wildfire-Induced Spread for Smarter Underwriting and Risk Mitigation in California
Insurance carriers in California face a complex peril, which has been tied to large losses, most recently the Palisades and Eaton Fires. Traditional wildfire models focus solely on hazard and do not account for conflagration risk. This oversight can lead to the inability to properly assess high-risk areas, which can ultimately lead to unexpected losses. Without a clear view of conflagration potential, insurers may limit their ability for growth in wildfire-prone areas. The advanced Wildfire Conflagration model assesses the potential for wildfire-induced conflagrations—where wildfires transition from natural vegetation to uncontrollable structure-to-structure fires in the built environment.
A Comprehensive Approach
Used alongside the Wildfire Risk Score, it offers a comprehensive understanding of both vegetation-driven wildfire hazard risk and the potential for fire spread between structures. This dual approach equips insurers to assess risk more accurately, optimize portfolios, and confidently expand or refine coverage in high-risk areas—ultimately strengthening risk management strategies and reducing wildfire losses.
Refined Risk Selection: Comprehensive report allows for insurers to leverage Wildfire Risk Score and Wildfire Conflagration Score together to determine where potential surprise losses may exist relative to your portfolio.
Accurate Assessment:
Built at the structure level, Wildfire Conflagration allows for risk to be differentiated location to location, allowing further refinement in risk decisions.
Mitigation Insight: Structure level mitigation insight such as defensible space, Class A roofs, and tree overhang—insurers can make more informed underwriting decisions.
Lowers inspection costs and streamline underwriting: Reduce reliance on costly in-person inspections by leveraging detailed structure characteristic data and risk insights, enabling faster and more efficient policy decisions.
An Unparalleled View of Wildfire Risk
With billions of dollars in insured losses resulting from conflagration-driven events like the Camp Fire, Marshall Fire, and Lahaina Fire, insurers need a more precise and predictive approach. Several factors influence the likelihood of a wildfire transitioning from natural vegetation to a structure-to-structure conflagration event.
The Wildfire Conflagration Model goes beyond vegetation risk, analyzing building density, structure characteristics, ember behavior, and climate conditions to assess the risk of structureto- structure fire spread.
(Titla) Location-Based Scoring
The Wildfire Conflagration model assigns a 1 to 100 score to each location to identify the likelihood of damage due to a conflagration event. Together, Wildfire Risk Score and Wildfire Conflagration Score offer a more comprehensive view of wildfire exposure. By leveraging both scores, insurers can refine their underwriting process, using the Conflagration Score as a secondary trigger to adjust their risk appetite for underwriting and risk decisions.
Additionally, there is structure-level Independent Mitigation Information provided, to help identify structure-specific risk factors and refine risk strategies, leading to more accurate management.
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