Location, Inc. Enhances Innovative FIRE RISK Product to Predict Frequency – The Likelihood a Location Will Experience Fire Loss

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Real Estate Weekly News -- Location, Inc., a leading provider of location-based analytics, announced major enhancements to the HYPERLINK "https://www.locationinc.com/fire-risk-assessment/" nFIRE RISK™ product. Now FIRE RISK predicts fire frequency, or the probability a location will have a fire, answering the insurance industry's call for innovation in fire loss prediction.

"It's not just the people. It's not just the structure. It's not just the location. Rather, human behavior, property vulnerability, and environment and location, each with many moving parts, converge in unexpected ways to create or mitigate fire risk," said Dr. Andrew Schiller, CEO and Founder of Location, Inc. "We're at the forefront of this big data work, with fire frequency emerging as the leading predictor of insurance loss."

Until now, carriers have relied on products that attempt to estimate the level of damage that would occur once a fire starts, usually by understanding the distance to a fire station or hydrant and other response factors. However, according to HYPERLINK "http://newscience.ul.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Analysis_of_Changing_Residential_Fire_Dynamics_and_Its_Implications_on_Firefighter_Operational_Timeframes.pdf" na recent study by the Underwriters Laboratory, the proliferation of engineered lumber and petroleum-based furnishings, including furniture foams, carpets, and drapes, means today's houses are more flammable and burn more quickly.

As a result, fire department response time is less important in predicting the severity of loss than understanding which properties are likely to have a fire in the first place.

"Thirty years ago, you had about 17 minutes to escape a house fire. Today it's down to 3 or 4 minutes," said Dr. Schiller. "With the speed of fire engulfment so quick, predicting fire frequency is key to understanding risk. And since most structure fires are directly or indirectly caused by people - the things people do and don't do, the mistakes people make - modeling human behavior in the context of structure and location has proven valuable."

Quantifying the lift FIRE RISK provides when applied to a holdout data set of over $3 billion in premium, and then applying those findings to the $74 billion homeowners insurance industry, HYPERLINK "https://www.locationinc.com/blog/2017/02/06/homeowners-holdout-test/" nreveals $19 billion in premium adjustments and $1.2 billion in claim reductions annually.

Keywords for this news article include: Homeowners, Real Estate, Location Inc..

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