KatRisk’s inland flood depth footprint is just one of the many hurricane post-event footprints made available during recent hurricanes.

With hurricanes comes a deluge of data. First, you have to obtain it, then comes the job of making sense of all of it. Whether you use SpatialKey for your analysis, or another data enrichment and geospatial analytics solution, here are a few tips and definitions to help you make sense of event footprints.

At a glance:

• Hurricane Michael is a Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph
• Located 60 miles SSW of Panama City, Florida
• Landfall expected along Florida's northeastern Gulf Coast sometime Wednesday afternoon
• Cat 4 hurricane has never made landfall in the Florida Panhandle
• Storm surge could reach 9-14+ feet in places
• Rainfall flooding is a significant threat inland into the Carolinas

Hurricane Michael has rapidly intensified. Now the question is, will it hold its strength with landfall? According to forecasters, Hurricane Michael's rapid intensification over the past two days, despite shifting winds, "defies traditional logic." Michael is expected to make history, as it will be the strongest hurricane to ever come ashore (since 1851) along the Florida Panhandle. Hurricane warnings are currently posted for the Florida Gulf coast from the Alabama/Florida border to Suwanee River, Florida, including Pensacola, Panama City, Destin and Tallahassee.

At a glance:

• Hurricane Florence is a Cat 2 with maximum sustained winds near 105 mph
• Potentially catastrophic flooding (20+ inches)
• Maximum storm surge 9-13 feet
• Catastrophic flash flooding and major river flooding expected
• More than 1 million evacuated
• Expected to crawl near or along the coast of the Carolinas through Friday
• Moving northwest at 10 mph
• Landfall expected sometime Friday

Centered about 130 miles east-southeast of Wilmington, North Carolina, Florence is moving northwestward—slowly. Although downgraded to a Cat 2, the original storm surge predictions are still valid with the National Hurricane Center stating Wednesday evening that, "the wind field of the hurricane continues to grow in size. This evolution will produce storm surges similar to that of a more intense, but smaller, hurricane, and thus the storm surge values seen in the previous advisory are still valid."

Just a year ago Hurricane Harvey was making landfall on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Now, the projected hurricane season looks quite different, having been downgraded most recently by NOAA. It would be easy to become complacent—if not for Hurricane Lane, a Category 4 cyclone, barreling down on the Hawaiian islands. We may not see a string of hurricanes like last season, but Hurricane Lane is a reminder that it does, in fact, only take one hurricane. There’s no time like the present to learn from the past and get your operational “ducks in a row”.

Hurricane Lane barrels towards Hawaii (photo courtesy of cbsnews.com)

Almost exactly one year after Hurricane Harvey dropped 50 inches of rain on Texas, Hurricane Lane, a Category 4 cyclone, is now barreling towards the Hawaiian islands, with its outer rainbands already drenching the Big Island. Forecasters say that it’s on course to move very close to the islands, or, make landfall from Thursday through Friday. With the likelihood of a direct hit growing, authorities have urged residents to set aside two weeks worth of food and water.

Recently, Swiss Re announced that that the firm believes that 2017’s series of catastrophes occurring in the second half of the year is not a one-in-100 year event, but more like a one-in-10 year event:

"Climate change is in fact warming not just the Earth but also the oceans and one of the reasons why the expectation of future hurricanes is so high is that last years' three hurricanes together—the $135 billion of losses—are a one-in-10-year event not a one in a 100-year event….We see the possibility for a repetition of these kinds of losses in the foreseeable future." -John Dacey, Chief Financial Officer, Swiss Re

Dacey is not the only high-profile insurance executive to comment on climate change. Evan Greenberg, Chairman and CEO of Chubb, recently asked, “Given there have been three one-in-100-year floods in 18 months, how can Harvey represent a 1 percent chance of occurring as the models suggested?”

If you’ve got your eyes set on technology that won’t move the needle this year, it’s time to reevaluate what can provide bottom line results in the short term. AI and machine learning will have their day in commercial insurance. But what are you doing today to drive tangible business results? InsurTech does not have to be a “pie in the sky” endeavor. It can be deployed right now.