Verisk Analytics: AIR Publishes Its Catastrophe Exposure Data Schema Publicly

BOSTON, New Jersey, July 1 -- Verisk Analytics, a data analytics provider, issued the following news release:

Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide today announced that it has published its Catastrophe Exposure Data Exchange (CEDETM) database schema publicly, to facilitate accurate and transparent data exchange throughout the insurance value chain more efficiently, and to encourage additional analytics on a greater number of exposures. CEDE is the open-source database format developed by AIR. AIR Worldwide is a Verisk (Nasdaq:VRSK) business.

"The (re)insurance industry is striving to introduce more efficiency into their catastrophe modeling workflows, and one way we can help is to facilitate transparency by providing a truly open and public exposure data schema," said Bill Churney, president, AIR Worldwide. "This is a schema that is familiar to the market; it has been used by our clients for more than two decades and does not require anyone to adapt to a new standard. With this truly open schema and a robust set of APIs, we are pleased to offer the market a solution they can use to streamline their modeling workflows immediately."

AIR has long been a proponent of open standards and in 1993 developed the UNICEDE(R) data format, which was made available to the industry. AIR's software platforms were the first to be certified by ACORD for the implementation of the ACORD property exposure standards, and today, AIR's exposure database schema is open and fully accessible to the public online. In addition, AIR is actively supporting the ModEx Open Exposure Data Format (OED) by freely providing its CEDE format as the database structure for models running on Oasis LMF, an open-source nonprofit loss modeling framework.

"Across the insurance industry, as less time is spent converting formats or ensuring consistency among data sets, stakeholders will have more time to focus on improving the quality of their underlying data and making better risk management decisions," said Bill Pieroni, CEO, ACORD. "We applaud the release of AIR's exposure data schema as part of a broader industry call for open and transparent data formats, and we're pleased to be working alongside the premier organization facilitating the exchange of global exposure data."

Churney concluded, "Open data standards remove unnecessary barriers and facilitate both the understanding of catastrophe risk and the robustness of model results. Making CEDE publicly available offers companies the opportunity to transfer risk more efficiently and to a wider audience. New entrants into the catastrophe modeling space can adopt CEDE to increase usability and achieve faster go-to-market speeds."