Allianz using Google Earth

I don’t know how many of you are fans of Google Earth (I love it, especially as it now does star maps, too), but it now seems to be creeping into mainstream corporate use. Allianz are now using it as a risk management tool to estimate exposures in, for example, the case of a hurricane hitting Houston, with its interconnected web of city and industrial sites, including offshore.

Gregg Pope, i/c natural disaster risk management at Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty uses it

> to get a feel for the lay of the land and to see where there are clusters of industrial sites, what risks the company is exposed to and what damage could result from earthquakes, storms, volcanic eruptions or floods in the region. Google Earth provides the geographical data, while Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty supplies information on insured facilities, complete with the insured amounts and deductibles. “In this way,” he says, “we can see immediately on the computer where we might have to take counter measures.”

While ‘counter measures’ sounds a bit quasi-crypto-military, it becomes clear later in the article that what he means is persuading underwriters not to write so much in areas densely-packed with similar sorts of risk or at least trying to keep track of the aggregations. So, really, he’s using Google Earth to tame natural phenomena–in his underwriting teams…