Sandy highlights uncertainty in catastrophe models: RMS

Catastrophe model developers will analyze the uncertainties in their models after the U.S. was hit by Superstorm Sandy causing total insured damage of $25 billion, reports Zecco citing Risk Management Solutions Inc.

According to AIR Worldwide Corp.'s principal scientist Tim Doggett, the storm was unusual for several reasons; firstly it had a very large wind radius which was not properly captured in AIR's event sets and secondly it had low central pressure that resulted in onshore winds weaker than their potential. While models helped quantify direct losses from the storm, they failed to quantify business interruption losses, said Jeffrey Tennis, manager of catastrophe analytics for Lockton Companies L.L.C.

Read more