WiReS Conference 2023

February 8 at 9:30 am | San Diego, CA

Save the date – CAPE is presenting “The Predictive Power of Defensible Space and AI-Driven Mitigation Potential at the Property Level”. Details below

Our Speaker

Mike McCormick | Product Manager at CAPE Analytics

Mike McCormick

Product Manager | CAPE Analytics

Mike is currently Product Manager of Weather Risk at CAPE Analytics, where he drives the strategy, roadmap, and execution of weather risk-related AI and ML-derived property intelligence data products for insurance carriers. Prior to CAPE, Mike worked at RMS for 7 years, most recently as a Model Developer of catastrophe models for a variety of insurers, reinsurers, and brokers to manage risks across the globe.

The Session

The Predictive Power of Defensible Space and AI-Driven Mitigation Potential at the Property Level

  • February 8, 2023
  • 9:30 am
  • Session 1B - Pacific Ballroom A

How can AI and computer vision help improve a property’s defense against wildfire? Wildfire continues to impact homeowners, communities, and the insurance industry. Climate change, persistent drought, hotter temperatures, increased migration into the wildland-urban interface (WUI), and stakeholders lacking strong insight into wildfire risk add up to a challenging situation.

Legacy tools and data sources used by stakeholders, like fire agencies and insurers, to understand and quantify risk have proven to be inaccurate or out-of-date. New solutions that use aerial and satellite imagery can produce quantifiable insights for every home in the United States by leveraging AI and machine learning algorithms to augment existing regional-focused hazard information with property-level vulnerability characteristics. Due to industry and academic research highlighting their importance, computer vision and machine learning technologies can focus on the critical vulnerability aspects of residential property like its vegetation clearance, roof construction, and proximity to surrounding structures. Using AI at scale then allows stakeholders to measure—for the first time—the exact impact of these property characteristics on risk and the likelihood of sustaining damage with precise statistical rigor.

Understanding a specific property’s vulnerability profile to mitigate risk, especially for homes and businesses across the wildfire-prone Western United States, could transform wildfire risk assessment. Insights generated with AI can be used to optimize fire agency programs and give insurers new opportunities to engage homeowners on effective risk mitigation practices that can help keep properties safe from the increasing threat of widespread wildfires.

In this session, learn about the practical deployment of this technology, its current capabilities and its limits, and how fire agencies and insurers can harness it to understand wildfire risk factors and to drive proactive conversations about mitigation with home and business owners.