ICAT Damage Estimator

June 9th, 2009

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

I have not been this excited about a web app for a long time if ever. ICAT is an insurance company located here in Boulder, Colorado and I have been working with them over the past year to develop a new website called the ICAT Damage Estimator which builds upon our research on normalized hurricane losses. The website is now live in beta mode here.

You can view a brief tutorial below, and I encourage you to do so as it has a lot of interesting functionality. In the coming weeks we’ll be rolling out some additional functions that will be mightily impressive. Stay tuned for that. Meantime, please explore the site, share it around, and use the feedback options on the site to let us know what you think.

2 Responses to “ICAT Damage Estimator”

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  1. Mark Bahner Says:
    June 9th, 2009 at 9:14 am

    Hi Roger,

    Yes, that’s really, really slick. What a world we live in!

    Imagine even a decade ago, if one were trying to do even some of the analyses allowed by the ICAT Damage Estimator. One would probably have a bunch of maps, some with hand-drawn hurricane tracks. What a mess!

    One thing I’d really like to get. (I think I’ve mentioned this before. ;-) ) I’d really like to get some estimates for hurricane damages from storm surge versus wind versus inland flooding.

    I seem to be able to find estimates for deaths, but not for economic damages. If you know where I could find some estimates for economic damages, I’d love to hear it.

    Best wishes,
    Mark

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  2. Roger Pielke, Jr. Says:
    June 9th, 2009 at 10:20 am

    -1-Mark

    Thanks. I wish that ther was such loss data available. unfortunately, it is not. On our pubs page you can see some of our efforts to disentangle some of this (e.g., inland flooding from tropical systems) but the data does not allow much.