Data Types

When importing a map layer, you must select a data type. This will help you when:

•       Determining what kinds of analyses you can run on your imported data.

•       Organizing your data into business use cases, enabling you to locate content easily for analysis and visualization.

There are four data types that you can choose from the Data Type list in Map Layer Import.

•       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 Scenario (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.

•       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.