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AIR Worldwide updates U.S. terrorism model

Posted On: Oct. 24, 2011 12:00 AM CST

BOSTON—AIR Worldwide Corp. has updated its U.S. terrorism model to reflect less frequent and lower-severity attacks, the Boston-based catastrophe modeler said Monday.

The enhancements to version 13.0 of AIR's U.S. terrorism model, which assesses potential property and workers compensation losses, is based on reassessments by a team of terrorism experts, including members of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it said in a statement.

The team's reassessment also considered recent studies such as the New York State Intelligence Center's examination of various target types of 32 terrorism plots since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The expert team considered the ability of a full range of terrorist groups to plan and accomplish a wide variety of attacks,” said Jack Seaquist, assistant vp at AIR, in the statement. “The update reflects the reduced capability for large-scale coordinated attacks in the United States from al-Qaida and its allies, as well as an increased reliance on lower-severity weapons requiring less expertise, training and development.”

1,000 new locations

AIR said its target and landmark database was updated with more than 1,000 locations, such as new prominent buildings, corporate headquarters and federal buildings, among others.

Other enhancements include revamped assessments of vulnerable sectors such as aviation and ground transportation, flexibility in handling terrorism exclusions and policy conditions, and a workers compensation model with updated event frequency and injury benefit levels.