Zurich Insurance Earns Outstanding Achievement Award From the 2019 National Hurricane Conference

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, April 24 -- Zurich Insurance, a property-casualty insurance company, issued the following news release:

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- Open-source methodology developed by Zurich to provide post-disaster learning at community level is the key driver of Zurich receiving this honor

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Zurich Insurance today won an Outstanding Achievement Award from the 2019 National Hurricane Conference. Zurich earned this honor for its work to develop and implement its Post Event Review Capability (PERC) approach, an open-source methodology designed to evaluate how natural hazards events turn into community disasters and to provide practical recommendations that promote community resilience.

"We are honored to be recognized by the National Hurricane Conference for our work to help communities, businesses and individuals learn from past disasters," said Paul Lavelle, chief claims officer for Zurich North America. "The lessons learned from our database of knowledge can help all stakeholders take meaningful steps to become more resilient."

Created by the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance in 2013, the PERC methodology has been applied to study 14 severe weather events around the world, including a new post-event review on Hurricane Florence that was released yesterday at the National Hurricane Conference. The methodology evaluates communities impacted by a disaster and the conditions that were present before the natural hazard occurred, how the community responded during the disaster, and how it recovered after the disaster.

"While events are natural, disasters are not," said Michael Szoenyi, flood resilience program lead for Zurich Insurance Group. "We have a choice whether and how we take action ahead of time to protect ourselves and build resilience. There are many lessons to be learned from each event that turned into a humanitarian catastrophe. Many are of striking similarity across the globe, and it is this important learning - often overlooked - that our unique forensic investigation can bring to the fore and share with the public. We thus contribute directly to the United Nations strategy for disaster risk reduction."

In the selection process, the National Hurricane Conference Award Selection Committee cited Zurich's development of the PERC methodology and commitment to sharing its knowledge to build resilience.

"The National Hurricane Conference is pleased to recognize Zurich Insurance with an award for their outstanding achievements," said John Wilson, chair of the Awards Committee for the 2019 National Hurricane Conference.

To gain access to the PERC manual and library of post-event reviews, go to https://www.zurich.com/en/sustainability/flood-resilience/learning-from-post-flood-events.