News from ISOTech 2009: ISO Introduces New Geoanalytics Tool for Intelligent Risk Management

ISO (Jersey City, N.J.), a Verisk Analytics subsidiary, launched a new spatial risk-management system to help insurers explore and analyze their portfolios. LOCATION Analyst enables insurers to interact with ISO data and policy/claims data with geographic information systems (GIS) tools and to identify insureds near high-risk areas or natural hazards. The system also allows insurers to target new areas of opportunity, analyze property based on custom defined risk levels, and investigate risk concentration of policies based on unique risk profiles.

According to Bryon Kenne, LOCATION Analyst product manager, "We use information from the entire suite of LOCATION services, including our Public Protection Classification program (PPC); Building Code Effectiveness Grading Schedule (BCEGS); and crime, wind, and catastrophe hazard data. We also incorporated state-of-the-art GIS assets from Environmental Sciences Research Institute, Tele Atlas, DigitalGlobe, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as real-time weather data and InfoUSA's database of more than 14 million businesses in the United States. And ISO can create robust geodatabases for all data contributors to ISO's Automobile-Property Loss Underwriting Service (A-PLUS) and Coverage Verifier databases and AIR Worldwide's UNICEDE users," he added in a statement.

Katherine Burger is Editorial Director of Bank Systems & Technology and Insurance & Technology, members of UBM TechWeb's InformationWeek Financial Services. She assumed leadership of Bank Systems & Technology in 2003 and of Insurance & Technology in 1991. In addition to ... View Full Bio