At InsTech London’s 5th March 2019 event ‘Claims Innovations in 2019’, Robin Merttens interviewed Avi Baruch, Co-founder and COO of Previsico, about innovating flood modelling.
Previsico are a spin-out company from Loughborough University. They have previously received Innovate UK Funding, and taken their solution, ‘Flood Map Live’ to market. Though founded in 2019, the project has been ongoing for 17 years, and uses flood modelling systems to predict exactly what streets will flood, in real-time.
Avi Baruch says, ‘The question that a lot more people are asking themselves is “What would you do if you knew exactly what streets would flood, right before a storm event actually hits?”’
Flooding costs the global economy $90 billion a year, but insurers still struggle to gain the right sorts of insights to be able to take actionable decisions to reduce risk. Previsico’s aspiration is to allow insurers to be able to confidently warn customers to protect life and possessions- for example, “Your street is at risk at 3:00 PM today, please do as much as you can reduce that risk.”
Previsico’s system, ‘Flood Map Live’, takes combinations of different weather scenarios and continuously models them in real-time, showing which streets are at risk and when. It is based on studying previous patterns of behaviour and monitoring live weather and river level fluctuation.
Currently in discussions with insurers, Previsico estimate that in the case of 2015’s Storm Desmond, use of their technology would have, conservatively, saved the industry £130m.
The full conversation with Previsico is available on InsTech London Podcast 19 (starting at 25:10), which is also available to download from Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
For more information about Previsico, go to previsico.com