Data Types
When importing a map layer, select a data type to help determine kinds of analyses to run on imported data and to help you organize data into business use cases.
- Historical event: Use this data type when importing vector or raster data to represent past or actual historical event footprints, such as the earthquake epicenter or peak ground acceleration or the hurricane path and wind speeds. You can accumulate against this data type and assign damage ratios.
- World scenario: This data type is similar to the historical event data type, except that it is used for studying footprints for scenario events (instead of for real ones), such as a Lloyd's Realistic Disaster Scenarios (RDS) event or any Extreme Disaster Scenarios (EDS) events for regular reporting or to model portfolios on a regular basis. As with historical events, you can accumulate against this data type and assign damage ratios.
- Hazard: Use this data type for vector or raster data when the data layers
represent hazard maps or layers where the hazards are exacerbated by a real disaster.
For example, while soil type does not create an earthquake, kind of ground shaking
that would occur during an earthquake depends on the soil type, as well as on other
things. Maps and layers of things that have an impact on real disasters include soil
types, flood hazard zones, distance to cause, fault lines, etc. You may also want to
use this data type for data that represents boundaries that provide a regulatory
framework that affects damage from disasters; such boundaries include the Florida
Flood Hazard Mitigation Zones and the California Department of Insurance Zones.Note: You cannot assign damage ratios to the various categories when you import data as a hazard data type and, therefore, you cannot accumulate against hazard layers. This is because the layers cannot be treated as individual events. With hazard data you can do simple aggregation, or you can filter on the number or risks or TRV in each zone, or within certain distance bands from line or point data.
- Boundary: This is the most flexible data type. You can use it to import many types of real-world data, including administrative boundaries, hazard zones, disaster events, etc. Boundaries are similar to events in that you can accumulate against them and assign damage ratios. This data type is particularly useful if you want to analyze an imported shapefile for different perils, for example, by running your inland flood portfolio and your storm surge portfolio against the same GIS layer. It is also useful when you are not sure what peril you want to use with your imported data when importing a map layer; in this instance, you can import both vector and raster data and then assign peril and damage ratios during configuration, rather than when importing the map layer. When you import GIS data as a boundary data type, the layers are available in the Custom Boundaries analysis type.
You can import both GIS vector layers and GIS raster layers during a map layer import. However, you cannot use some of the data types in different types of analyses. For example, you can import vector point data, but you cannot accumulate against point data. You can only use point data for visualization purposes. In general you can only accumulate against polygon vector layers and raster layers.
When you run an analysis against an event or against a boundary group that contains lines and/or points layers, Touchstone retrieves the distance to the nearest line or point for those layers. The results are available in the Interactive Browser, if it is enabled.
The following table summarizes the Touchstone data types, the GIS data formats supported by each data type, whether you can accumulate on the data, and support for the data type in a Hazards and Intersections analysis.
| May layer import data type | GIS data type | Accumulate? | Hazards and Intersections | Other information |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Historical event | Vector point | No | Yes | You can group points with polygons. Points are suitable for viewing earthquake epicenters or terrorism locations and for distance to points analyses. |
| Historical event | Vector line | No | Yes | You can group lines with polygons. Lines are suitable for visualizing hurricane paths, fault lines, etc. They are also suitable for running distance to points analyses. |
| Historical event | Vector polygon | Yes | No | |
| Historical event | Raster | Yes | No | |
| World scenario event | Vector point | No | Yes | You can group points with polygons. Points are suitable for viewing earthquake epicenters or terrorism locations and for distance to points analyses. |
| World scenario event | Vector line | No | Yes | You can group lines with polygons. Lines are suitable for visualizing hurricane paths, fault lines, etc. They are also suitable for running distance to points analyses. |
| World scenario event | Vector polygon | Yes | No | |
| World scenario event | Raster | No | Yes | |
| Hazard | Vector point | No | Yes | Distance to point analysis. |
| Hazard | Vector line | No | Yes | Distance to point analysis. |
| Hazard | Vector polygon | No | Yes | |
| Hazard | Raster | No | Yes | |
| Custom boundary | Vector point | No | No | You can group points with polygons. Points are suitable for viewing earthquake epicenters or terrorism locations. |
| Custom boundary | Vector line | No | No | You can group lines with polygons. Lines are suitable for visualizing hurricane paths, fault lines, etc. |
| Custom boundary | Vector polygon | Yes | No | |
| Custom boundary | Raster | Yes | No |