Catastrophe modelling specialists Risk Management Solutions (RMS) hit back again yesterday at accusations that their computerised predictions for likely hurricane damage scenarios were flawed.

The Tampa Tribune on Sunday published a story suggesting that ?unscientific? assumptions built into an RMS model were allowing their insurance company clients to justify inflated rates for certain US coastal areas.

The claim was based on interviews with two climate experts whose input, from a panel convened in Bermuda in 2005, was used in the making of the model.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has since accused insurers of ?taking advantage? of his constituents, while the Speaker of the House Marco Rubio said he would demand more information on the model.

?We?re going to ask them to produce that model, and I hope they?ll comply, and if they don?t, we reserve the right to avail ourselves of our subpoena power,? Mr. Rubio said on Tuesday. ?I?m not sure how they?ll react to that, but we think it?s important.?

But RMS, which has an office on the Island and counts many Bermuda insurers and reinsurers among its clients, has accused the Tribune of ?one-sidedness? and has given its own account of what was taken into account when the model was designed.

In a letter to the Tribune and copied to , Dr. Robert Muir-Wood chief research officer of RMS, said despite efforts to help the Tribune publish a balanced viewpoint, ?we at RMS were stunned by the article?s inaccuracies and one-sidedness?. The letter then goes on to explain in some detail the method and reasoning behind the model?s creation.

Florida State University geologist Jim Elsner and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research meteorologist Thomas Knutson, told the Tribune that insurance industry objectives drove the change and faulted the company?s scientific justification.

The probability of where hurricanes would make landfall was weighted towards certain areas in the model and Professor Elsner described that as ?unscientific?.

Dr. Muir-Wood?s letter conceded that RMS climatologists had been responsible for deducing where hurricanes would form, but added that all the expert panellists had signed off on this aspect of the model. ?The RMS regional landfall rates were not challenged by any of the panellists,? Dr. Muir-Wood wrote.

?While it is now recognised that Professor Elsner has developed his own theories on how hurricane activity translates to regional landfall rates, he did not challenge the RMS landfall rates developed after the 2005 expert elicitation.?

He went on to point out that Professor Elsner had been invited to attend a second RMS panel meeting, but had declined as he said he was then working for one of RMS?s competitors.

?All of the materials produced at these meetings, as well as the details of how activity rates were implemented, have been documented and are in the process of being published in peer-reviewed scientific literature,? Dr. Muir-Wood added.