SBIR Phase II: Temblor--an innovative, mobile source of seismic risk understanding and solutions for the public and providers

Temblor, Inc., Tiburon CA

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to attempt to reduce the largest financial protection gap in the world: the impact of a great earthquake on a major population center. The public is woefully unprepared for such an event, banking on government assistance in lieu of personal resilience. Worldwide, there is $400 billion in uninsured global disaster risk. Even in California, there are 3-4 million uninsured seismically vulnerable homes and a million uninsured vulnerable businesses. People need to understand their vulnerability in terms of dollars and safety, they need to learn how they can protect themselves and their families, and most important, they need to be inspired to take action. This project's free mobile app and blog use public data and models to explain a home's seismic risk, and to show the benefits of buying a seismically safer home, retrofitting an older home, or buying earthquake insurance. Most important, the app and blog do so without scaring, soothing, or snowing the user. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is building a suite of global seismic hazard and risk models that enable the company to forecast the consequences of earthquakes to any building, anywhere on Earth. At every step in the process, the technology rids the models of bias, judgment, or expert opinion, relying instead on algorithmic, reproducible and testable constructs. The company provides insurance agents with sales tools, giving a home or building owner's earthquake score and financial losses in the largest likely earthquake. It provides insurance companies with the means to underwrite (price) insurance, to assess the average annual losses of their portfolios, or to assess portfolio losses at any likelihood of occurrence. For a catastrophe bond whose payment is triggered by a shaking intensity, the company provides the likelihood of attachment over any time period. For a reinsurance company, it provides the ability to compare losses at any or all locations. For a mortgage lender, it provides mortgage portfolio losses, and an estimate of mortgage defaults in the scenario earthquakes to which the lender is most vulnerable. For a multinational company with globally distributed facilities, the technology assesses and ranks their worldwide risk to enhance their resilience. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.