Geospatial analysis

We enhanced our suite of geospatial APIs to help further streamline your workflows that use custom boundaries. We also made changes to our Geospatial engine to align more closely with the updated NGM loss engine.

We introduced a number of custom boundary related APIs to automate geospatial analyses for this analytical scenario. Clients licensing the geospatial module can now retrieve existing custom boundaries, specify an identified custom boundary and apply perils of interest, configure custom boundaries, and run a geospatial analysis. Custom boundaries are particularly helpful in assessing the impact of ongoing or new events such as wildfires, floods, or hurricanes.

In the same way that we updated algorithms for detailed loss analysis, we included in geospatial analysis a revised logic for calculating the minimum maximum deductibles at both the layer and sub-limit levels. Change in order of applying deductibles and limits: deductibles are applied before limits at the time of analysis. Also, the updated Loss and Geospatial engines no longer take into account the AIR Default Behavior for residential contracts; this is because all residential contracts apply location deductibles before location limits.

The bounding box functionality enables you to run the same exposures for different locations to evaluate limits and marginal impact. Since this functionality was not available in our public API services, clients had to depend on a workaround process where they identified grid points for locations of interest and then had to manually maintain a list of these grid points to include in their automated wokflow. This workaround was time-consuming to perform on production environments and allowed users to add up to only 50,000 grid locations per analysis. To solve these limitations, we extended the existing bounding box definition capability in the Geospatial public API services.

Enhancements

You can:

  • Retrieve a list of custom boundaries for a specific business unit in Touchstone.

  • Specify custom boundaries and run a geospatial analysis.

  • Retrieve results of geospatial analyses run with custom boundaries through a geospatial API.
  • Add bounding box definitions for a grid ring analysis through a geospatial API.

Retrieve a list of custom boundaries

You can retrieve a list of custom boundaries available for geospatial analysis in a specific business unit. We implemented a new GetCustomBoundaries method to retrieve the custom boundary details, such as name and SID, and geospatial area shapefile, which you can use to visualize where your exposures are accumulated and then drill down to key locations.

Retrieve details of each custom boundary

You can use the area polgon custom SIDs to retrieve granular details for each custom boundary SID. We implemented a new CustomBoundaryOption sub-class to store custom boundary details such as the number of boundary records, name, user-provided peril, unique identifier of each boundary, and the type of spatial shape.

Run Geospatial analysis with custom boundaries

You can run a geospatial analysis with custom boundary definitions. We implemented a new SubmitCustomBoundaryExposureConcentrationAnalysis method that allows you to specify one or more custom boundaries and configure a geospatial analysis.

Retrieve results of the Geospatial analysis

We implemented a new GetCustomBoundaryResults method to return results of the custom boundary geospatial analysis, as well as the information describing the paging layout of the analysis.

Add bounding box coordinates

We created a new BoundingBox class in the existing Exposure Concentration Analysis namespace to configure the bounding box definitions such as the latitude and longitude coordinates for a grid ring geospatial analysis.

Revised logic for deductibles

The revised logic is in line with implemented Gen3 NGM algorithms. The revised logic applies deductibles before limits. By default, the ApplyDeductibleBeforeLimit Boolean property in the ExposureConcentrationAnalysisOptions class is set to "true". This means that the Boolean property will override the AIR Default behavior definition for all geospatial analysis requests. The following list shows the revised logic for any geospatial analysis:
  • The updated loss engine applies the smallest gross for analyses run with minimum deductibles.
  • The loss engine applies the largest gross loss for analyses run with maximum deductibles.
  • The loss engine selects the second smallest gross loss for analyses run with both minimum and maximum deductibles.

Therefore, when you run:

  • The analysis with location, sublimit deductibles and minimum maximum deductibles at the layer level, the engine applies deductibles for three scenarios, selects one based on the revised logic, and applies the layer limit.
  • The analysis with location deductibles and minimum maximum deductibles at the sublimit level, the engine applies deductibles for three scenarios, selects one based on the revised logic, and applies the sublimit.