Catastrophe modelers AIR Worldwide Corp. and Risk Management Solutions Inc. each made significant upgrades to their U.S. earthquake risk models this week in efforts to provide better ways to identify the probability of an earthquake.

The updated models are being distributed to several insurers, reinsurers and government agencies globally and are expected to help better manage earthquake risks in the United States, Canada and Mexico, according to the modelers.

The updated models are likely to lead to the reduction in U.S. earthquake insured loss estimates of 10% to 25% for the average insurer across all lines of business, RMS said in a statement.

“Over the past several years, there has been substantial new research to better assess seismic hazard and the response of structures to earthquake-induced ground motion,” said Jayanta Guin, senior vp of research and modeling at Boston-based AIR, in a statement.

Newark, Calif.-based RMS said the most significant changes to its model are in California, where loss-modeled estimates will reduce approximately 5% to 15% for most commercial portfolios.

“Given the amount of property exposure in Los Angeles, insurers could now see it accounting for as much as 60% of their overall California risk,” said Paul VanderMarck, chief products officer with RMS, in a statement.

He added that Los Angeles now has a similar earthquake risk as the San Francisco area, whereas San Francisco’s probability for an earthquake previously was much higher.

Both models updated their seismic hazard maps to be consistent with the latest U.S. Geological Survey’s national seismic hazard maps.

AIR also updated its approach to estimating earthquake-induced ground motion based on new ground-motion technology.

The new models incorporate this ground-motion data into the modeling of expected property damage and human casualties due to earthquakes, RMS said. This would give insurers and insureds an idea of the potential damage and collapse probability of buildings based on height, construction type, age and soil conditions.