All posts by Jeff Dunsavage

Health & Safety

Travel Risk: It’s NotAll About COVID-19

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Anticipation that a COVID-19 vaccine – combined with social distancing, mask wearing, and other protective measures – may soon lead to increased travel revives our need to think about travel insurance.

Even before COVID-19, travel insurance purchases were on the rise, but primarily for trip cancellation coverage – the very product that wound up disappointing many who had their holiday plans disrupted by the virus. Most policies exclude pandemics or fear of travel, which made them practically useless after the outbreak.

Pandemic risk wasn’t on many travelers’ radar screens before the coronavirus struck – any more than the many common illness, injuries, or causes of death that ought to have prompted them to add medical and medical evacuation to their travel coverage. A report by the U.S. Travel Insurance Association (USTIA) last year found Americans spent nearly 41 percent more on travel insurance in 2018 than in 2016.  However, trip cancellation/interruption coverage accounted for nearly 90 percent of the benefits purchased. Medical and medical evacuation accounted for just over 6 percent.

People don’t want to think about illness, injury, or death when planning a pleasure trip – still less pay to mitigate an improbable (at the time) threat like a global pandemic.

Travelers who wanted to cover all their bases could have purchased cancel for any reason (CFAR) coverage, which provides some reimbursement (usually 50 to 75 percent) if you cancel, no matter what reason. Before the pandemic, CFAR would have cost 40 to 60 percent more than a standard travel insurance policy. It may be even more expensive now.

Airlines offering COVID-19 coverage

Some airlines have begun offering COVID-19 coverage. This week, Cathay Pacific announced that  it is providing free coverage to all passengers.

“Customers who fly with Cathay Pacific from Dec. 7 to Feb. 28, 2021 will be covered for medical expenses related to a COVID-19 diagnosis incurred while overseas,” Insurance Journal reports. “The free cover will be automatically applied when customers book their flights.”

Air Canada recently announced that members of its Aeroplan affinity program making eligible new bookings originating in Canada will receive COVID-19 emergency medical and quarantine insurance.  Emirates introduced a similar program in July that it says is free of charge and covers all passengers flying to any destination in any aircraft. The airline recently announced that it has expanded the coverage, adding new features from December 1. 

It’s not surprising to see airlines incorporating a COVID-19 “value add” to help boost bookings by an anxious public, and it will be interesting to watch this new business scheme play out. But, lest eager travelers forget, more routine risks that you probably weren’t insuring against before pandemic remain.

Falls, crashes, and drownings

“Globally, an estimated 37 million unintentional falls requiring medical treatment occur each year” write researchers in the journal Injury Epidemiology, citing 2018 World Health Organization (WHO) data. And falls aren’t the most common cause of injury and death on vacation. Research indicates the top two causes of death are automobile accidents and drownings.

Out of the one billion tourists traveling globally each year, it is estimated that 30 to 50 percent are either injured or become ill while traveling abroad.

Don’t let yourself be blindsided by hazards that can be easily avoided or mitigated. Understand the risks your travel plans may entail and insure against them appropriately.  

SHOULD YOU BUY TRAVEL INSURANCE?

INFECTIOUS DISEASE: GOOD REASON TO BUY MEDICAL TRAVEL INSURANCE – BUT CHECK THE TERMS

TRIP COVERAGE: IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT CANCELLATIONS

TRAVEL COMPANY COLLAPSE OFFERS LESSONS IN RISK

Disaster Preparedness, Disaster Resilience, Webinars

Resilience Town Hall: Looking Back and Ahead

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It’s become commonplace to say COVID-19 has “changed everything” and that we’re now figuring out how to live within “the new normal.” But listening to five experts in yesterday’s Resilience Town Hall, I was repeatedly struck by how much 2020 – with its pandemic and record-breaking hurricanes, wildfires, and civil unrest – has uncovered holes in our “old normal” existence that have long needed fixing.

The town hall – the last this year in a series presented by Triple-I and ResilientH2O Partners in partnership with the Resilience Accelerator –  brought these experts together to discuss lessons learned from 2020 and predictions for 2021. 

“Disasters can and will happen,” said Carlos Castillo, chief development officer at Tidal Basin Group, who previously led resilience efforts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “The challenge is for people to recognize that they can happen to them and there are things they can do about them.”

Castillo spoke about FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. In 2020, BRIC made $500 million available on a competitive basis for disaster mitigation programs. While that amount won’t solve the nation’s disaster worries, Castillo said, the idea was to encourage public and private entities to provide matching funds for efforts that would make a real difference.

COVID-19 has made even more federal money available to states and localities and spurred projects that might not be obviously pandemic-related at first glance. Castillo cited one state that is applying for federal funds to fix its roadways to improve access to healthcare facilities. Such improvements would benefit the state and its people not just during a pandemic but in all kinds of emergencies.

This matters because, as Castillo put it, “the pandemic has shown us the importance of our logistics systems. Suddenly, everybody’s competing for masks, gowns, gloves, and respirators. It’s a matter of life or death.”

Public-private partnership

Public-private collaboration was a prominent theme. Rich Sorkin, CEO and cofounder of data and analytics company Jupiter Intelligence, said that only three years ago resilience was “almost the exclusive province of the public sector.”

But by the start of 2020, he said, climate change and its impacts were among the top priorities identified by many commercial entities, “especially in financial services.”

COVID-19 interrupted that immediate focus.

“Executives were distracted dealing with disruptions in their own internal workflows and with changes in the economy,” Sorkin said. Nevertheless, he noted several positive developments, including BRIC and the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment – an effort by insurers, investors, asset managers, analytics firms, and regulators to understand the return on investment in resilience and communicating it to financial markets.

Sorkin said he expects 2021 to be a “breakthrough year for the private sector from a resilience perspective.”

Richard Seline, co-founder of the Resilience Innovation Hub, reinforced Sorkin’s prediction, stating that “the private sector no longer leaves it to the government to be the driver of solutions.”

Behavioral change

Dr. Michel Léonard, CBE, Triple-I vice president and senior economist, pointed out that the insurance industry has continued to provide coverage throughout 2020 on economically viable terms for consumers and businesses.

“One of the reasons we’ve been able to maintain this ecosystem,” he said, “has been our work with regulators and commissioners – and increasingly with consumers, to be able to drive behavioral change.”

Léonard and the other speakers discussed the complexity of bringing about such change – the role of regulations and incentives, the importance of data-driven decision making, and getting consumers to engage in the sort of cost-benefit analysis usually associated with professional risk managers.

 “Whether it’s building codes or pre-emptive risk mitigation, it costs money,” Léonard said, “Whether it’s new construction or public or private, you have to have people ultimately say, ‘It’s worth the money’.”

He added that technology – such as telematics for cars and smart-home systems – is providing data that can support arguments for change.

Eleanor Kitzman, founder of Resolute Underwriters and a past insurance regulator for Texas and South Carolina, described the fragmentation and politicization that can make such change difficult.

 “We’ve got a real lack of alignment – not among interests, because the interests are aligned – but of incentives,” she said. “I’m focused on windstorms at a residential level, but also on the impact it has on communities.  These storms devastate communities, and some of them never come back. And it’s so avoidable.”

Auto Insurance, Highway Safety, Technology

Usage-Based Insurance Gets Confidence Boost During COVID-19 Pandemic

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Drivers seem to have become more comfortable in the past year with the idea of giving up their data to help insurers more accurately price their coverage.

In May 2019, mobility data and analytics firm Arity surveyed 875 licensed drivers over the age of 18 to find out how comfortable they would be having their insurance premiums adjusted based on typical telematics variables. Between 30 and 40 percent said they would be either very or extremely comfortable sharing this data.

In May of this year, they ran the survey again with more than 1,000 licensed drivers.

“This time,” Arity says, “about 50 percent of drivers were comfortable with having their insurance priced based on the number of miles they drive, where they drive, and what time of day they drive, as well as distracted driving and speeding.”

This is a year-over-year increase of more than 12%. What happened?

The answer begins with a “C” and ends with a “19.”

Money talks…

Telematic information was part of the reason insurers could return money quickly to their customers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that fact seems to have brought positive attention to usage-based insurance (UBI). Telematics combines GPS with on-board diagnostics to record and map where a car is, its condition, and how fast it’s traveling. This technology is integral to UBI, in which insurers are able to adjust premiums based on driving behavior.

During the first wave of the pandemic, Arity data showed considerable changes in how and when people were driving when they began to self-quarantine in March 2020. Driving across the U.S. dropped significantly, and this data helped spark the trend of insurance carriers offering refunds to their policyholders.

“These paybacks were widely covered by the media, including Forbes, so consumers became aware of the potential savings, even if their own insurer didn’t offer a discount,” Arity reports.

“Private-passenger auto insurers returned around $14 billion in premiums this year to the nation’s drivers as miles driven dropped dramatically in the pandemic’s early months,” says James Lynch, Triple-I’s chief actuary. “This resulted in a five percent reduction in the cost of auto insurance for the typical driver in 2020, as compared to 2019.” 

Health & Safety

Tribal Communities Disproportionately Hurt by COVID-19

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The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected minority communities across the United States. A less reported but no less significant part of that story has been the disease’s impact on tribal populations.

According to the Center for American Progress, the Navajo Nation has one of the highest infection rates in the country – and they’re not alone in their suffering.

“Native people make up only around one-tenth of New Mexico’s population but more than 55 percent of its coronavirus cases,” the center wrote back in June, when it said the Navajo infection rate was “greater than that of the worst-hit state, New York; it is even greater than that of Wuhan at the height of the outbreak in China.”

In Wyoming, American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) people are less than 3 percent of the population but make up more than one-third of the state’s cases, the center said.

Inequities exacerbated

Limited health services, insufficient infrastructure, and above-average rates of immunocompromising diseases all predate COVID-19 and contribute to the vulnerability of these populations. Many tribes also feel excessive pain from the pandemic-spurred economic downturn as their lifeblood enterprises in gaming and hospitality are shutttered. Casino closures in early March led to an estimated loss of more than $4.4 billion in economic activity and $997 million in lost wages, affecting 246 tribes with over 500 gaming facilities in 29 states.

The Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma is among the entities that have filed lawsuits against insurers related to business interruption coverage claims. As hundreds of COVID-19-related lawsuits regarding business interruption coverage make their way through U.S. courts, judge after judge has found in favor of insurer defendants.

Meanwhile, Native American leaders are keeping close watch on the U.S. Supreme Court battle over whether to repeal all or parts of the Affordable Care Act – a move many say could devastate health care for AI/AN communities.

“In the context of what we’re all facing,” said Stacy Bohlen, chief executive officer of the National Indian Health Board, “this is not the time to add this extra burden and an additional crisis onto the Indian health system and onto Indian people.”

The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in 2010, contains provisions specifically relevant to Native Americans, including permanent reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which provides ongoing funding for Native health programs. It also expanded tribes’ authority to run their own health care programs, including behavioral health and youth suicide prevention programs.

“People talk about the Affordable Care Act like it’s all one thing,” said Sarah Somers, an attorney with the National Health Law Program, who specializes in litigation to help underserved communities access good health care. “But if you repeal it, then all of the codified statutes go away.

A political force

The number of people in the United States identifying as American Indian has climbed in recent years, with California, Arizona and Oklahoma accounting for the largest concentration of the nation’s AI/AN populations, according to a USAFacts analysis of Census Bureau data.

“The U.S. held 2.8 million people who self-identify solely as Native American in 2018, with another 2.9 million identifying as multiple races, including Native American,” according to U.S. News & World Report. “The country’s population that identifies as solely Native American expanded 13% between 2000 and 2018, while the number of individuals who identify as at least partially Native American ballooned 77%.”

In this year’s elections, Native American voters played an important role in some key battleground states, according to High Country News. In Arizona, indigenous people account for nearly 6% of the population — 424,955 people as of 2018 — and eligible voters in the Navajo Nation alone number around 67,000. Native support for Joe Biden — who has released a robust policy plan for tribal nations — may have helped him win that heavily contested state.

Business Insurance, Business Risk, Emerging Risks, Health & Safety, Risk Management

House Panel Discusses Approaches to Manage Future Pandemic Risk

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That the insurance industry alone can’t be expected to cover future pandemic risk seemed to be a given at yesterday’s hearings by the House Finance Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development, and Insurance.

But, as is so often the case, the devil is in the details.

The session – Insuring Against a Pandemic: Challenges and Solutions for Policyholders and Insurers – was chaired by Rep. William Lacy Clay. In his opening statement, Clay said, “It is not realistic or practical to expect the insurance industry to shoulder the astronomical cost of a global pandemic. The American Property and Casualty Insurance Association has estimated that paying all [COVID-19-related] claims, regardless of exclusions, would amount to $1 trillion per month.”

With respect to business interruption coverage claims currently being adjudicated, Clay referenced both the virus exclusions in most commercial property policies and the lack of “direct physical damage or loss” in COVID-19-related cases.

John Doyle, president and CEO of global insurance broker Marsh, testified on the importance of a public-private partnership to address pandemic risk, as well as to the need to “act now” on a solution for future pandemics.

“Acting now on a public-private pandemic risk solution will accelerate the economic recovery by reducing uncertainty,” Doyle said. “Moving forward, capital markets will seek assurances that companies have protection against prospective pandemic risk. The pace of recovery will depend upon the nature and degree of confidence in the marketplace.”

Doyle said the credit and power of the U.S. government is essential – “at the same time, I believe the insurance industry has a role to play.”

The Pandemic Risk Insurance Act (PRIA), introduced by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, provided the jumping-off point for the testimonies and discussions of alternative proposals. PRIA, patterned after the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) put in place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was generally recognized as a good start – but several other structures were proposed to address perceived weaknesses.

One is the Business Continuity Protection Program (BCCP), advanced by the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC), the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) and the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (Big “I”).

Brian Kuhlmann, chief corporate counsel for Shelter Insurance, speaking on behalf of NAMIC and APCIA, described BCCP as a program that “would provide straightforward revenue replacement for businesses and nonprofits of all sizes” using a parametric approach that wouldn’t require claims adjustment. Unlike traditional insurance, which pays for damage if it occurs, parametric insurance automatically pays when specific conditions are met – regardless of damage incurred.

Michelle Melendez McLaughlin, chief underwriting officer for the small commercial and middle market at Chubb, presented a “bifurcated” framework that would treat small businesses differently from mid-size to large corporations.

“Pandemics affect small and large businesses differently,” she said. The Chubb framework would cover small companies for up to three months of payroll and other expenses. Policyholders would be paid a pre-determined amount when the policy is triggered. “This provides policyholders with certainty that they will receive timely financial assistance after an event.”

For businesses with more than 500 employees, the Chubb proposal would create Pan Re – a federal reinsurance facility. “Private insurance companies that choose to sell coverage would write pandemic policies at market terms and retain some portion of the risk. The rest of the risk would be reinsured through Pan Re.”

R.J. Lehmann, senior fellow at the International Center for Law and Economics, agreed with other witnesses that the insurance industry isn’t equipped to handle pandemic risk alone. He went further to question whether insurance is the best structure for addressing this problem.

“Insurance is a system of risk transfer, not a system of economic relief,” Lehmann testified. “Even if private insurers could provide this coverage—on their own or with government support—it is not clear their incentives would align with public health goals or with the aims members of Congress likely have in mind.”

The best argument for a public-private partnership, he said, is that insurers can help policyholders mitigate risks. “But it’s important to ask, ‘Mitigate the risk of what’? The risk you’re trying to reduce is the risk that a business will shut down. But, in a pandemic, you want businesses to shut down. We want them to have a safety net so they can shut down and survive.”

Hartmann counseled legislators to take their time and get the solution right, drawing from all the options that exist.

“Let’s be humble about how little we know, even about the current pandemic,” he said. “Get help to the businesses, workers, and communities who need it now. Don’t legislate for the next pandemic while we’re in the midst of the current one.”

Legal Environment

COVID-19-Related Litigation: A Snapshot

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At a recent webinar hosted by the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), Cary Silverman, a partner at the law firm of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, presented a breakdown of COVID-19-related litigation drawn from his firm’s research.

The charts below are based on 4,283 complaints that – while not comprehensive – provide a useful snapshot of the types of litigation and their relative frequency. They were updated on November 8.

Contract-related cases accounted for 1,255 suits and the largest percentage. Not far behind are insurance cases – mainly involving business interruption – at 1,054 and employment cases at 910.  Employment cases, Silverman said, allege wrongful termination or  failure to pay employees properly during the pandemic.

Taken together, the three broad categories – contract, insurance, and employment – account for more than 75 percent of COVID-related litigation to date.

Among contract cases, the largest share is in the Miscellaneous category (278 cases), which Silverman said are general contractual disputes where performance was affected by the pandemic. The second-largest group (262) consisted of lawsuits against schools (primarily higher education), seeking refunds of tuition and fees. Next come litigation involving leases (225) and event, ticket, or other refunds (224).

Cases involving actual exposure to the coronavirus come in relatively low, at 343 (8 percent), a fact that Silverman attributes to the economic lockdown.

“As more businesses reopen, exposure cases are likely to increase,” he said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, nearly half of those cases (164) have involved nursing homes. Cruise ship passengers account for 64 exposure claims, and suits related to exposure risk have totaled 58. At least 44 cases to date have involved employee injury or death.

Health & Safety

Utility Shutoffs Threaten to Worsen Pandemic Pain

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I’ve been living and working at my father’s house since the onset of COVID-19, keeping him from having to venture out and risk infection. Late last week, his furnace died, and we were fortunate to have family nearby to move in with while we wait for it to be fixed.

I’ve been truly grateful and mindful of people – especially the elderly – who don’t have such options. Then, this morning, I read this National Journal article, which threw light on the subject from a different angle.

“Throughout the pandemic, states and cities have put in place moratoriums on utility shutoffs,” the Journal writes, “but many have expired and more will be lifted in the coming weeks.”

The pandemic’s economic dislocations have put many people in situations in which they may not be able to pay basic bills, like rent, electricity, heating, and water. Not only that – even people who can move in with family or friends may be putting themselves in danger of infection.

People can’t remain in a home safely without water, said Rianna Eckel, senior organizer for Food & Water Watch, which advocates on environmental and resources issues.

“You can’t do basic things like wash your hands, which is one of the top safety recommendations,” she said. “You can’t bathe or shower; you can’t flush your toilet; you can’t cook; you can’t really clean. That raises the risk for COVID transmissions because you’ll have families who are going to neighbors’ houses, going to friends’ houses, so that they can wash some clothes and cook or maybe take a shower.”

Similar concerns apply to electricity, gas, and steam utilities.

“Those are critical to the ability to heat your home, to cook, refrigeration to preserve foods or medication,” said Emily Benfer, a law professor at Wake Forest University. “You need electricity to use medical equipment. So all of these are necessary to sheltering in place and to maintaining health, let alone preventing the spread of the virus.”

Benfer added, “The COVID-19 pandemic and social-distancing requirements have created a situation in which utility shutoff is a life-threatening emergency for the majority of Americans.”

In our case, family members had all just been tested for COVID-19 out of concern about a possible exposure (we came up negative). This precaution, too, isn’t readily available to many people. Especially people who have to choose between paying for electricity or food.  

In November, 10 state moratoriums on utility shutoffs are slated to end, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association. Thirty-three states have expired moratoriums or did not put one in place.

Lawmakers and advocates have been pressing for a moratorium on water shutoffs, calling for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to use the same authority it exercised when the agency issued a stop to evictions. In a House-passed bill providing COVID-19 emergency funding, $1.5 billion was included to assist low-income households with water bills.

“It’s incumbent on utilities to figure out a way to make sure that people’s health is not put at risk by having widespread shutoffs, because that’s just going to make the pandemic all that much worse,” said Erik Olson, a health expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The answer to this problem is not to be shutting off low-income people’s water all over the country.”

Beyond the clear humanitarian concerns, if these issues are not addressed effectively, they could lead to litigation and insurance claims to be resolved for some time to come.

Catastrophes, Coastal Property, Disaster Resilience

Hurricane Delta Triggered Coral Reef Parametric Insurance

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Hurricane Delta last month triggered a 17 million peso (US $800,000) insurance payout to the  Trust for the Integrated Management of the Coastal Zone, Social Development, and Security for the State of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The parametric policy, deployed last year, cost the trust nearly 5 million pesos (US $230,000), covering 150 square kilometers (58 square miles) of coastal ecosystems for the entire 2020 hurricane season.

Recent research illustrates the benefits provided by mangroves, barrier islands, and coral reefs – natural features that frequently fall victim to development – by limiting tropical storm damage, particularly from storm surge. Unlike traditional insurance, which pays for damage if it occurs, parametric insurance pays when specific conditions are met – regardless of whether damage is incurred. Without the need for claims adjustment, policyholders quickly get their benefit and can begin their recovery. In the case of the coral reef coverage, the swift payout will allow for quick damage assessments, debris removal, and initial repairs to be carried out.  

Quintana Roo partnered with hotel owners, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Parks Commission to pilot a conservation strategy involving a parametric policy that pays out if wind speeds greater than 100 knots hit a predefined area.  

Similar approaches could be applied to protecting mangroves, commercial fish stocks that can be harmed by overfishing or habitat loss, or other intrinsically valuable assets that are hard to insure with traditional approaches.  

Floods

Mangrove Insurance: Parametric + Indemnity May Aid Coastal Resilience

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Earlier this year, I wrote about the role mangrove forests and coral reefs play in mitigating tropical storm damage and how insurance might help protect these critical resources. A recent Nature Conservancy study looks specifically at opportunities in mangrove protection and restoration and identifies where insurance could be used to support their resilience benefits.

In many places, mangroves are the first line of defense, their aerial roots helping to reduce erosion and dissipate storm surge. In Florida, one study found, mangroves alone prevented $1.5 billion in direct flood damages and protected over half a million people during Hurricane Irma in 2017, reducing damages by nearly 25% in counties with mangroves. Another study found mangroves actively prevent more than $65 billion in property damage and protect over 15 million people every year worldwide.  

Unfortunately, they frequently fall victim to development that creates the greatest potential for storm-related losses.

The Nature Conservancy study describes the implementation of a coral reef insurance product in Quintana Roo, Mexico, and explores how the model could be adapted for mangrove preservation. In Quintana Roo, a trust fund accepts money from public, private and philanthropic sources, as well as a federal fee collected from beachfront property owners who wish to use the beach for commercial purposes. It uses those funds to buy the insurance – a parametric product that is triggered if wind speeds in a designated area exceed 100 knots.

Parametric policies cover risks without the complications of sending adjusters to assess damage after a catastrophe. Instead of paying for damage that has occurred, it pays out if certain agreed-upon conditions are met – for example, a specific wind speed or earthquake magnitude in a particular area. If coverage is triggered, a payment is made, regardless of damage. Speed of payment and reduced administration costs can ease the burden on both insurers and policyholders.

“Unlike coral reefs, however, mangroves do not usually require rapid post-storm interventions in order to survive,” the study says. This means an indemnity insurance policy might be created that delivers payments based on post-catastrophe assessments of mangrove damage. “There are a variety of insurance products available that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of mangroves, with initial payouts made quickly through parametric covers and assessed payouts made through indemnity cover at a later stage.”

Before a mangrove insurance policy can be developed and deployed, a full feasibility study would need to be conducted.  The Nature Conservancy report recommends that this include “higher-resolution flood-risk models, estimation of the wind-reduction benefits of mangroves, and the construction of fragility curves to show the relationship between damage to a mangrove forest and some component of a storm event, such as storm surge or wind speed.”

Disaster Preparedness, Disaster Resilience, Webinars

Latest “Lightning Round” Highlights Resilience Hack-a-Thon Winners

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Last week’s Lightning Round III: Products and Services for Disaster and Risk Mitigation featured presentations by four teams of entrepreneurs who have developed products to boost societal resilience and mitigate natural disaster risks. This was the third time this year that Triple-I and its Resilience Accelerator, ResilientH20 Partners and The Cannon, have connected entrepreneurs with leading insurance innovation specialists and investors.

The first two presentations were by prize-winning teams from 2020’s Hack-for-Resilience competition, which was hosted by Wharton Risk Center and Triple-I’s Resilience Accelerator. The teams presented:  

  • Air.ly:  An app that identifies locales near wildfire zones where individuals afflicted with respiratory issues, or other health complications, can find fresh-air recreation opportunities. It won the prize this year for the Best Overall Hack-for-Resilience.
  • Insura: An app that uses a home’s location and historical loss data to recommend mitigation and maintenance activities that could reduce a homeowner’s insurance premiums.  It won this year’s prize for the Best Application of Insurtech.

Ami Nachiappan, a Junior at New York University, presented on behalf of the four-member Air.ly team.

“For many with sensitive respiratory systems, the wildfires’ smoke has created difficulty breathing and dizziness,” she said, pointing out that this can be the case hundreds of miles from fire locations and long after the blazes have been extinguished.

Air.ly provides “a comprehensive visualization of real-time air-quality data across the U.S.,” as well as well as recommending locations for safe outdoor recreation activities. Existing weather apps that display air-quality information lack “call to action options and cautionary warnings,” and recreation apps like Yelp lack real-time weather and air-quality information.

This fragmentation, Nachiappan said, is what sets Air.ly apart.

Savan Patel, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke for the four-member Insura team. Insura is a third-party “gamification platform” for home improvement products modeled after applications that seek to reduce automobile accidents and claims by influencing driver behavior.

In addition to the hack-a-thon winners, two established businesses – members of the Resilience Innovation Hub “portfolio of disaster risk-mitigation innovation” presented their products:

  • Thermal Gate™ 2.5:  An artificial intelligence-based system that screens and detects individuals who have an elevated body temperature before they enter venues that are open to the public.
  • Mesh++ : A just-in-time WiFi community network that requires no external power or wiring to generate broadband access for first-responders, citizens, and preparedness interests.

All four presentations can be viewed below: