In an effort to provide corporate risk managers a more complete picture of the risks facing them in real time, Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide Corp. has unveiled a new service: Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics.

The effort is intended to help corporate risk managers' need for fresh data and analytics between formal updates to climate models.

Explaining the subscription offering last month at the Risk & Insurance Management Society Inc.'s annual conference in Los Angeles, Peter Dailey, vice president and director of atmospheric science at AIR Worldwide, said the service is aimed squarely at risk managers looking to assess a range of catastrophe loss scenarios in real time.

He offered the example of a risk manager overseeing multiple manufacturing facilities in a large area as a hurricane approaches. The risk manager could track the potential impact of the storm using Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics and make more informed decisions about shutting down.

The innovation behind the service is a newly developed application called ClimateCast. The Web-based tool is updated four times daily using data from various meteorological organizations including the National Hurricane Center.

The information derived from ClimateCast then is augmented with information obtained from AIR's Catastrophe Risk Engineering services, which assigns a team of engineers to physically examine a structure and provide site-specific risk assessments, and data from the AIR's catastrophe loss models to give risk managers a customized view of the risks facing their assets in real time.

Aside from an imminent danger, Mr. Dailey sees the offering helping risk managers with strategic planning. He noted that Real-Time Climate Risk Analytics uses historical data and simulated storm scenarios. For example, a risk manager in Houston could use the tool to gauge projected losses if a storm equivalent to the Category 4 hurricane that leveled nearby Galveston, Texas, in 1900 were to hit the area today.

“We've combined these unique capabilities into a new analytical tool to help companies better understand the climate's influence on current and future risks,” Mr. Dailey said. “We're confident the applications will help risk managers do their jobs more effectively and make more informed and confident risk management decisions.”