Patent Issued for Structure condition sensor and remediation system (USPTO 11182861): Hartford Fire Insurance Company

2021 DEC 10 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx journalists, a patent by the inventors Campbell, Casey Ellen (Rocky Hill, CT, US), Carvalko, Jr., Joseph R. (Milford, CT, US), Frey, Kelly L. (Nashville, TN, US), Helitzer, Jonathan (Simsbury, CT, US), Murchie, G. Stewart (West Hartford, CT, US), filed on July 15, 2019, was published online on November 23, 2021.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11182861, is Hartford Fire Insurance Company (Hartford, Connecticut, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors:

“1. Field of the Invention

“This invention relates to a method and computerized system for creating, publishing, underwriting, selling and managing insurance products, the issuance criteria and premium, for which, is based upon the technology utilized in connection with the insurable interest.

“2. Description of the Prior Art

“Underwriting is the process of establishing insurability and premium levels that will economically and profitably transfer risk from a policyholder to an insurance company. In determining insurability and premium, insurance carriers take into account such factors as profit goals, competition, legal restrictions and the costs associated with losses (claims costs), loss adjustment expenses (claim settlements), operational expenses (commission and brokerage fees), general administrative expenses, and the cost of capital.

“More particularly, an insurance carrier typically assesses a unit of exposure on the basis of a premium, known and predicted exposure, and loss and expense experience. In this manner carriers establish the basis of potential loss and the general direction of trends in insurance claim costs. In setting and subsequently adjusting which risks to underwrite and the premium a carrier catalogs by time and place, accidents as well as changes in claim costs, claim frequencies, loss exposures, expenses and premiums; the impact of catastrophes on the premium rates; the effect of salvage and subrogation, coinsurance, coverage limits, deductibles, coverage limitations or type of risks that may affect the frequency or severity of claims; changes in the underwriting process, claims handling, case reserves and marketing practices that affect the experience; impact of external influences on the future experience, including the judicial environment, regulatory and legislative changes, fund availability, and the modifications that reflect the impact of individual risk rating plans on the overall experience. However, notably absent from the factors customarily taken into account and one of the most profound influences in loss experience is the effect of technology. Therefore, an underwriting process that considers the continuing technology revolution would be anticipated to better assess loss ratios for insurable interests.

“It is widely assumed that using various technologies may reduce the risks of loss associated with building structures, generally. Consequently, state, local and national construction codes affecting such things as structural requirements, electrical standards, plumbing and paint are constantly being advanced. For example, home building codes throughout the United States have placed a minimum standard on requirements for construction to assure a minimally safe habitation and structural integrity under typical local conditions for geologic and meteorological occurrences. Beyond the requirements imposed through legal regulation, property owners may also employ systems that further militate against one or another loss or hazard. For well over a generation, home security systems have been utilized to reduce losses from dwelling break-ins. Many fire alarm systems automatically call fire stations minimizing fire damage and reducing human loss through early detection and central alarm at the appropriate responder location. In addition to fire notification, flame-retardants are in wide use to reduce damage from fire. In some instances one technology replaces another as to improve a condition that is inherently dangerous, but the replacement technology retains the fundamental objective of reducing damage. For example, asbestos has been virtually banned as a building material in favor of flame retarding products as a means for reducing fire hazards. As new hazards are discovered, newer technology will be incorporated to achieve the benefits of a safer society.

“From a baseline related to minimum code requirements, underwriters of property and casualty insurance factor into the risk/loss proposition items that relate to the structure to be insured (by way of example, the year of construction, type of construction, area, roof materials, egresses, the property’s physical address, its proximity to fire apparatuses such as fire hydrants or fire stations, proximity to environmental hazards, such as superfund dumps, large bodies of water and its current market and replacement value). Underwriters also take into account items not directly related to the physical properties of the insurable interest, but that have been statistically shown to correlate with risk/loss (by way of example, the insured’s credit rating, age of the property owners, and the insured’s prior claim history).

“Contemporary underwriting practice is typically reduced to a binary choice to issue or not to issue a policy of insurance based upon the aggregate of statistically relevant underwriting criteria, rather than producing insurance products tailored to combinations of risk reduction technology. As such, the benefits of a class of technology may not be adequately considered during the underwriting process. Significantly, the range of efficacies associated with specific technologies within a class of technologies are ignored as a salient fact.

“A prime example might be an underwriting practice that does not factor in the functional details of available sensor technology such as by way of example, the type and corresponding unique features of the spectrum of smoke detectors, fire detectors, intrusion systems, radiation, chemical or biological hazard detectors (such as the detection of disease producing infectious agents, causing viral infections or the presence of allergens related to common allergies and forms of sinusitis). Other examples of sensing potential damaging situations are: water level or leakage detectors, vibration detectors, and meteorological conditions.

“Also, the current insurance underwriting practice does not factor in details on various actively responsive technologies that are currently available such as by way of example, the type (i.e. specific functionality) of sprinkler system, the presence of a chemical release system to, for instance, release fungicides to kill mold spores or water pumping systems to remove damaging water or products that communicate medical emergencies. Nor does the current insurance underwriting practice discriminate between self-reports by the potential insured of extant technology and actual, continuous functionality (monitoring) of relevant technology designed to reduce damage/risks.

“Products as familiar as the common home alarm system or security lighting, to the less common sensors attached to screens and windows, would be considered the kinds of products that are readily available by today’s consumer. Overlooked however are the safety advantages of slip-less floor covering, outside walkways constructed from materials that insure against the accumulation of ice and snow and/or have high friction qualities due to the materials of constructions. However, in the future there will be a wide variety of products that detect and/or ameliorate all forms of hazards to property and health that will be available and utilized depending upon the value, as well as the incentives provided, such as through less expensive insurance premiums.

“The insurance industry has long recognized the risk reduction concomitant to the incorporation of certain products in buildings. Certain products keep loss premium ratios down as well as providing a benefit to the property owners in terms of reduced property loss and improved health.

“Thousands of separate and distinct materials and products are employed in the construction of homes and commercial buildings. Large numbers of such building products have a significant impact upon personal safety and the ability of the structure to withstand catastrophic events. Architects, builders and home owners have considerable opportunity to chose among diverse products that might for purposes of discussion be separated into categories such as building materials, sensor technologies and responder technologies. An exhaustive list of products from those categories, alone pertaining to loss prevention and mitigation could reasonably be expected to run into the millions of combination (e.g. more than 100 different materials times 100 different sensor technologies times 100 different responder technologies). Various specific combinations may have corresponding efficacies with regard to the amelioration of loss. In each instance, the consumer would anticipate a corresponding premium to reflect the expected loss ratios attendant to using a particular product or combination of products (and might be influenced to make more economically sound judgments in incorporating materials/technologies that reduce damage/risk, if the benefit of such choices could be clearly articulated in costs savings from reduced premiums over the life of the material/technology in question).”

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In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “The invention herein disclosed deals with insurance products, systems and methods that treat the management of risk, relating to specified, yet unknown, future events. Insurance underwriters specify a particular product relating to an event or phenomenon for which there is a range of possible future outcomes. The related insurance company then offers an insurance contract relating to the predetermined phenomenon and corresponding range of outcomes based upon a range of efficacies of suitable technology within a class of technology. The offered contracts specify a requirement or an incentive to employ a particular technology to militate against loss entitlement and specify the maximum policies insurance limits with and without the militating technology at the future time a claim is made and a consideration or premium payable upon binding. Such invention may be expressed in terms of an underwriting system/process for determining issuance of insurance and calculation of premium for a single insurable interest or a system/process for calculation and presentation of multiple underwriting options/end-states based upon the use of a plurality of technologies incorporated into the insurable interest to militate against loss.

“Expert computer systems, which may include decision trees, neural networks and statistical inference engines, have the ability to store information, interpret the information and draw inferences based upon the information such as received from sensors and descriptors of loss mitigation technology. The general architecture of an expert system involves a problem dependent set of data declarations called the knowledge base, and a problem independent program which is called the inference engine. The data collected from sensors or other quantifications of loss mitigation technology such as been described hereinabove can provide the information, from which data declarations can be constructed and classifications of the best practice loss mitigation technology for a given insurable interest may be determined. Pattern recognition systems, such as utilized in the form of neural networks, provide for a large theoretical basis for these types of systems. In general see, Principles of Expert Systems edited by A. Gupta et al., and published by IEEE Press (1988). By employing an expert system an individual has the benefit of a system that can provide qualitative, nontrivial and high quality solutions and answers to outcomes that depend on complex arrays or quantities of data. See also, U.S. Pat. No. 5,023,785, R. F. Adrion et. al. entitled Hematological-Diagnoses Apparatus Employing Expert System Technology, which describes a system within the class of expert systems that may be adapted to deal with complex arrays or quantities of data as may be required in some applications of this invention. These systems can benefit the analysis of data collection, analysis, and diagnosis in complex insurance industry applications, especially when dealing across entire spectrums of loss mitigation classifications.

“A classifier for improving methods of insurance underwriting, which includes a processor having one or more inputs to receive data structures representing a first unmitigated insurance underwriting risk pertaining to an identified building structure and a second mollified insurance underwriting risk on the assumption a certain technology will be employed in the building structure. The difference between these two data represents the incorporation of a technology that aides in the reduction of casualty property losses (either through reduction of claim incidence or absolute claim costs). Each data structure forms a logical association that may represent a logical, qualitative, comparative or quantitative evaluation (collectively hereinafter referred to as a “difference”) which difference may be assigned a weight referred to as a weighted difference, between the first field representing an unmitigated risk, and the second field representing a mollified risk. The plurality of data structures generate weighted differences to form a plurality of weighted outputs. At least one of the weighted output signals represents a class for the unmitigated risk/mollified risk, and the datum represents an input into a process that sums the weighted differences to generate a minimized risk for a building structure under consideration. Essentially, the processor utilizes the weighted differences to form a logical association that may represent a logical, qualitative, comparative or quantitative evaluation (collectively hereinafter referred to as a “sum”) wherein the weighted sum of one or more inputs represents levels of risk, with and without the technology to reduce the risk. By way of example, two (2) inputs, and one output might be the simple output from two risk levels, one with and one without the mitigating technology. The output is therefore: W₀*t₀+W₁*t₁+K_b>0 for a risk having two different technologies incorporated into a hypothetical building structure and having a constant K resulting from non technology related losses.

“Alternatively, a classifier for purposes of assigning combination of technologies existing in a building structure utilizes a decision tree. In this manner data structures representing the quantification of risk reduction attendant a given technology or product can be chained into a plurality of decision trees. In one aspect of the invention the decision tree provides for the creation of a decision tree that includes a construction phase and a pruning phase. The construction phase requires that the set of building structures and corresponding combination of technologies be recursively partitioned into two or more subpartitions until a stopping criterion is met, and a classification assigned. The decision applies a splitting criterion to every node of the tree. These splitting criterion are determined by applying a predetermined rule or function that an underwriter applies to eventually place the applicant for insurance into a classification that is then utilized as a factor in establishing the premium.

“Each node may utilize any number of conventionally available analytical techniques for producing a splitting criterion. For example, each branch may be programmed to produce a weighted average (W_1-N) that may subsequently be applied in successive nodes and branches to influence the final risk classification.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system for processing data comprising: one or more storage devices storing a database identifying a plurality of sensor technologies that reduce risk of loss to a structure; one or more computer processors in communication with the one or more storage devices, configured to: receive a monitoring data alert electronically output by a sensor technology incorporated in the structure, the monitoring data alert indicative of a current risk relating to the structure; responsive to receipt of the monitoring data alert, perform real time polling of remedial technology in the structure for taking remedial action to mitigate the current risk; receive remedial action monitoring data electronically output by the sensor technology responsive to the real time polling of the remedial technology for taking remedial action, the remedial action monitoring data indicative of whether a remedial action has been taken to mitigate the current risk; input the monitoring data alert and the remedial action monitoring data into a neural network trained on data structures indicative of an unmitigated factor pertaining to the structure and a mitigated factor based on incorporation of the sensor technology in the structure; determine, by the neural network, executed by the one or more computer processors, an operational status of the sensor technology and data indicative of whether the remedial action has been taken to mitigate the current risk; and output, responsive to the neural network determination of whether the remedial action has been taken to mitigate the current risk, a notification identifying the current risk and a determination of whether the remedial action has deployed.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more computer processors are configured to receive the monitoring data alert responsive to real time polling, by the one or more computer processors, of the sensor technology incorporated in the structure.

“3. The system of claim 2, wherein the neural network comprises one of: (a) a multilayer neural net including a neural net input layer having a plurality of computational processing units having a one-to-one correspondence to technology mitigation data; (b) a technology classifier having a set of technology mitigation vectors, each vector specific to one building configuration, and inputs having a one-to-one correspondence with classification of mitigation technology values; and © a decision tree classifier developed during a construction phase requiring that a set of building structures and corresponding combination of technologies be recursively partitioned into two or more subpartitions.

“4. The system of claim 1, further comprising a data storage device storing data indicative of terms of a risk mitigation policy issued to a covered entity and covering the structure; wherein the one or more computer processors are further configured to determine, based on the operational status of the sensor technology and the data indicative of the terms of the risk mitigation policy in the database, whether an alteration in the data indicative of at least one of the terms of the risk mitigation policy, after issue of the risk mitigation policy, is warranted and, responsive to a determination that the alteration in the data indicative of at least one of the terms of the risk mitigation policy is warranted, alter data indicative of the at least one of the terms.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the monitoring data alert comprises structure condition data and alert data concerning the current risk.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the operational status of the sensor technology comprises one or more of an operational status of a sensor for sensing the current risk to the structure, an operational status of an electronic data output for reporting the current risk to the structure, and an operational status of an automatic remediation system for deploying the remedial action to mitigate the current risk to the structure.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the sensor technology incorporated in the structure comprises one of smoke detectors, fire detectors, intrusion systems, radiation detectors, chemical detectors, biological hazard detectors, water level detectors, water leakage detectors, vibration detectors, and meteorological condition detectors.

“8. The system of claim 1, wherein the remedial action monitoring data comprises at least one of: data from a chemical remediation system for mitigating a mold risk to the structure; data from a water pumping remediation system for mitigating a water risk to the structure; and data relating to a type of sprinkler system for mitigating a fire risk to the structure.

“9. The system of claim 1, wherein the structure comprises one of a commercial building, a residential building, a vehicle, a marine craft, and an aircraft.

“10. A computer-implemented method comprising: maintaining in a database stored in one or more storage devices, data identifying a plurality of sensor technologies that reduce risk of loss to a structure; receiving, by one or more computer processors, a monitoring data alert electronically output by a sensor technology incorporated in the structure, the monitoring data alert indicative of a current risk to the structure; polling, in real time by the one or more computer processors, remedial technology in the structure for taking remedial action to mitigate the current risk; responsive to the real time polling of the remedial technology for taking remedial action, receiving, by the one or more computer processors, remedial action monitoring data electronically output by the sensor technology indicative of whether a remedial action has been taken to mitigate the current risk; inputting the monitoring data alert and the remedial action monitoring data into a neural net trained on data structures indicative of an unmitigated factor pertained to the structure and a mitigated factor based on incorporation of the sensor technology in the structure; determining, by the neural network, executed by the one or more computer processors, an operational status of the sensor technology and data indicative of whether the remedial action has been taken to mitigate the current risk; and outputting, responsive to the neural network determination of whether the remedial action has been taken to mitigate the current risk, a notification identifying the current risk and a determination of whether the remedial action has deployed.

“11. The method of claim 10, wherein receiving the monitoring data alert is responsive to real time polling of the sensor technology incorporated in the structure.

“12. The method of claim 10, wherein the neural network comprises one of (a) a multilayer neural net including a neural net input layer having a plurality of computational processing units having a one-to-one correspondence to technology mitigation data; (b) a technology classifier having a set of technology mitigation vectors, each vector specific to one building configuration, and inputs having a one-to-one correspondence with classification of mitigation technology values, or © a decision tree classifier developed during a construction phase requiring that a set of building structures and corresponding combination of technologies be recursively partitioned into two or more subpartitions.

“13. The method of claim 10, further comprising: storing, in a data storage device, data indicative of terms of a risk mitigation policy issued to a covered entity and covering the structure; and determining, based on the operational status of the sensor technology, the data indicative of whether the remedial action has been taken to mitigate the current risk, and the data indicative of the terms of the risk mitigation policy, whether an alteration in the data indicative of one of the terms of the risk mitigation policy is warranted and, responsive to a determination that the alteration in the data indicative of at least one of the terms of the risk mitigation policy is warranted, altering data indicative of the at least one of the terms.

“14. The method of claim 10, wherein the monitoring data alert comprises structure condition data and alert data concerning the current risk.

“15. The method of claim 10, wherein the operational status of the sensor technology comprises one or more of an operational status of a sensor for sensing the current risk to the structure, an operational status of an electronic data output for reporting the current risk to the structure, and an operational status of an automatic remediation system for deploying the remedial action to mitigate the current risk.

“16. The method of claim 10, wherein the sensor technology incorporated in the structure comprises one of smoke detectors, fire detectors, intrusion systems, radiation detectors, chemical detectors, biological hazard detectors, water level detectors, water leakage detectors, vibration detectors, and meteorological condition detectors.

“17. The method of claim 10, wherein the remedial action monitoring data comprises one of: data from a chemical remediation system for mitigating a mold risk to the structure; data from a water pumping remediation system for mitigating a water risk to the structure; and data relating to a type of sprinkler system for mitigating a fire risk to the structure.

“18. The method of claim 10, wherein the structure is one of a commercial building, a residential building, a vehicle, a marine craft, and an aircraft.”

For more information, see this patent: Campbell, Casey Ellen. Structure condition sensor and remediation system. U.S. Patent Number 11182861, filed July 15, 2019, and published online on November 23, 2021. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11182861.PN.&OS=PN/11182861RS=PN/11182861

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