Known Issue 233

The definition of square footage for occupancy 303 in the Verisk Earthquake Model for the United States has changed to refer to the area of an entire building to be consistent with Verisk Hurricane Model for the United States. The previous definition in the Verisk Earthquake Model for the United States was the area of single unit only.

Issue ID	233
Summary	The definition of square footage for occupancy 303 in the Verisk Earthquake Model for the United States has changed to refer to the area of an entire building to be consistent with Verisk Hurricane Model for the United States. The previous definition in the Verisk Earthquake Model for the United States was the area of single unit only.
Description	An inconsistent interpretation of the square footage for occupancy 303 (multi-family) between Verisk’s hurricane and earthquake models results in an imbalance in loss values between perils; in the Verisk Hurricane Model for the United States, input square footage is treated as the area for the entire building, while in the Verisk Earthquake Model for the United States, input square footage is considered as the area of a unit. This change of definition will require a loss modification for occupancy 303 in Touchstone 5.0 and Touchstone 5.1. An inconsistent interpretation of the square footage for occupancy 303 (multi-family) between Verisk’s hurricane and earthquake models results in an imbalance in loss values between perils; in the Verisk Hurricane Model for the United States, input square footage is treated as the area for the entire building, while in the Verisk Earthquake Model for the United States, input square footage is considered as the area of a unit.
Resolved in
Date posted	4/30/2018
Software versions affected	10.0, 9.1, 9.0
Feature set	Detailed loss
Models
Potential for loss numbers impact	Yes
Workaround	Verisk recommends coding Gross Area as the area of the entire building for both U.S. Hurricane and US Eartquake models. For U.S. EQ, Verisk recommends using the UDF1 field to tag 303 locations that have a gross area > 3,000 square feet. Then, use a loss modification factor of 0.95 when running analyses that applies only to the tagged 303 locations. This modification factor represents an average approximation for a wide range of building sizes.