Background The earth observation revolution

is here with constellations of small and large optical

imaging satellites promising to deliver valuable

information using photos taken from their low

earth orbits. Dozens of applications have emerged

from the stunning maps

on Google earth to land

use analysis and

agricultural production

monitoring.

Earth imaging from space

also has considerable potential for the P&C insurer

across a spectrum of applications from property

risk evaluation to major storm/disaster response.

The goal of this paper is to envision a business

intelligence product, tailored to P&C insurers,

which delivers compelling operational advantages

and substantial financial returns when responding

to property damage resulting from major storms.

Challenge The insured value of properties in

the US totaled $80 trillion dollars in 2012 and will

continue to grow. Catastrophic losses from natural

disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados,

floods, etc.) in the US

from 2005 to 2015

totaled $650 billion

dollars. Insurance

industry estimates

generally put fraud at about 6 percent of the

property/casualty insurance industry’s incurred

losses. These factors combine to create a daunting

challenge (and potentially significant opportunity)

for P&C insurers in managing large portfolios of

valuable properties, particularly with regard to the

volume of claims and the potential for fraud

following a major catastrophic event.

Three key factors limit the usefulness of optical

space imaging in applications to storm/disaster

response: (1) clouds can persist for days following

a storm preventing timely optical space imaging, (2)

space imagery at useful levels of detail (i.e 1m

resolution or better) can be very expensive, and (3)

analyzing hundreds (or thousands) of images

represents a considerable burden and cost.

Opportunity In Summer of 2018 Trident

Space will launch the first affordable space-based

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging smallsat

with the ability to monitor nearly any location on

earth day or night and in all weather conditions

using radio waves instead of sunlight to obtain

images from space. We are also creating a new

generation of SAR image

processing and analytics

capabilities which can

automatically extract

information from both

individual SAR images and

periodic series of images.

Trident Space also seeks to create a tailored

business intelligence product in collaboration with

P&C insurers which offers compelling operational

advantages and substantial financial returns to the

early adopters in the P&C insurance industry.

Vision The vision for such a product might begin

with an efficient mechanism for the insurer to

specify a portfolio of properties to be monitored

from the company’s existing database. Imagery

would be obtained by Trident on a periodic basis

(e.g. monthly or quarterly) for each property and

change detection processing for each sequential

pair of images would indicate changes to the

property detailed in a report. In the event of an

approaching storm, images would be obtained

before, during and after the storm passes and

change detection processing would alert agents to

those properties with significant changes/damage

and areas affected by high water. This information

and the associated images would form the basis for

an efficient and effective response and also establish

the basis for claims adjusters to validate or dispute

claims with hard evidence admissible in court.

Please contact Nick Karangelen at

nick@tridsys.com to express your interest in this

new technology and in discussing its potential

application to the P&C insurance industry.