Companies will be able to prepare themselves better in the eventuality of a terrorist attack thanks to the latest catastrophe risk management system released by AIR Worldwide Corporation.

Risk modelling software provider and service consultant AIR announced the launch of its updated US Terrorism Model, available in Version 9.5 of its catastrophe risk management systems, which incorporates the results of two years of research into the effects of conventional bomb blast in complex urban environments.

Since urban density can have a significant impact on the effects of a bomb blast, AIR has enhanced its damage functions to account for the varying impact of bombs in relation to the density of properties in close proximity, to better reflect the local building environment for all locations in the US.

"AIR's US Terrorism Model can assist insurers in evaluating their terrorism risk and perform detailed loss analysis to identify high concentrations of potential loss in small areas such as city centers," said Jack Seaquist, senior manager at AIR Worldwide.

"Additionally, the model enables insurers to perform a fully probabilistic loss analysis that considers the full range of likely attack locations and weapon type combinations, estimates the losses and assigns an estimated probability to each level of loss."

In addition, the injury loss distributions implemented in the model have been updated to reflect the latest research from the medical community regarding trauma from terrorist bomb blasts. The distributions take into account injuries that result from damage to the building (airborne debris and collapsing building elements), and the direct effects of overpressure waves.

The injury loss data in the updated model uses state average claim costs by injury type based on the latest three policy periods of historical claims, as reported to the NCCI. Benefits were brought to their current levels and medical costs and wages were trended using regional indices.

Finally, it incorporates a greatly enhanced industry property exposure database. The updated database features more accurate building locations and building-specific characteristics for commercial properties, according to AIR.

Physical attributes, such as number of floors, construction type, and wall type are incorporated by location. The property exposure database for residential properties features a significant increase in resolution.

"As catastrophe models become more sophisticated and detailed, the exposures used as input to the models need to be more accurate and at higher resolution," said Mr. Seaquist.

"This is particularly true for the terrorism model, where the effects of an attack can be highly localised and street address information, including the physical attributes of properties has become almost essential."