Verisk Announces Important Remote Sensing Capabilities in Its Geomni Business
New resources and recent acquisitions are driving deeply integrated and wide-ranging solutions
JERSEY CITY, N.J., August 1, 2017 - Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK), a leading data analytics provider, today announced a range of new capabilities in its Geomni business unit.
The Geomni Remote Sensing Fleet
Verisk recently acquired a number of leading U.S.-based aerial survey companies and their aircraft fleets. In addition, Verisk is investing in the most technologically advanced and efficient aerial surveying platforms available. Fully implemented, the Geomni fleet includes more than 125 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. Geomni operates from 15 hubs strategically located throughout the United States.
Geomni's high-tech remote sensing aircraft are capable of reaching any point in the contiguous 48 states and Hawaii within hours. In the event of a catastrophe, Geomni's highly skilled teams can quickly deploy to provide important postcatastrophe aerial data.
"The new Geomni fleet, combined with our deep expertise, allows us to efficiently source multitier, multispectral aerial imagery across the United States at a scale and frequency not previously available," said Scott Stephenson, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Verisk Analytics. "The imagery and data we collect are immediately processed using our industry-leading computer-vision technology to provide our customers with the up-to-date and precise information they need, delivered directly to the key products they use."
Geomni imagery and data will drive and support uses in many markets, including insurance, commercial property, energy, banking, architecture, engineering, emergency response, urban planning, and much more.
Verisk expects to invest approximately $100 million across 2017 and 2018 in the Geomni capabilities and assets for remote sensing and imagery.
Geomni Property Essentials Available in Real Time
This year, users will have real-time access to important property data in the Geomni library for every parcel and location Geomni has sourced. Newly captured imagery is processed by advanced algorithms and directly added to the Geomni database. This provides insurers, reinsurers, and others immediate information about all types of properties, including residential, commercial, agricultural, and more. The information includes the building footprint, roof shape, roof type, roof slope, swimming pool, outbuildings, percentage of tree coverage on the property and over buildings, and much more.
New Geomni Solutions for Property Stakeholders
New, innovative solutions available (or rolling out) for all types of professionals who work with property include the following:
- Geomni-assisted estimating: In a major technological leap forward, Geomni introduces innovative artificial intelligence with the power to create estimates-complete with the scope of damage, including material identification, the needed line items, quantities, and more. For example, an estimator can select exterior building features on a 3D model, and Geomni suggests an estimate. Any edits are fast and easy.
- Geomni image inspection: The estimator starts with a pre-loss Geomni data package and adds UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) imagery of damage for analysis by the Geomni system. The system uses these data sources to decide how the loss should be repaired. For example, after a hailstorm, it can determine the number of hail-damaged shingles and then suggest, based on customer thresholds, which roof faces should be replaced.
- Geomni UAV (drone) and ground-based inspection: The Geomni mobile app allows anyone with a mobile device to capture ground images around a structure and easily upload UAV images directly into the Geomni system. Users gets highly accurate 3D property models for damage estimating in tools such as Xactimate®. They can also receive meaningful, actionable information for property risk analysis, ITV (insurance-to-value) solutions, and more. The images enhance satellite and aerial data and add detail where the imagery might be obscured from the air by trees and other features.
- Geomni web viewer: The web viewer can be used to connect directly to the vast Geomni aerial imagery database and enables customers to measure items such as the length of a fence, the distance of a house to the nearest fire hydrants, the height of a building, or the square footage of a driveway.
- Geomni integrations with Verisk solutions: Geomni's integration with the industry-standard Xactimate estimating system provides assisted estimating, 3D models, and much more. Geomni integrates with the 360Value® insurance-to-value calculator to provide detailed property characteristics and with ProMetrix to complement its huge commercial property database. Geomni integrates with Verisk weather solutions to provide services such as a storm map showing an insurer's policies in force, along with an estimate of the damage that can be expected on each of the homes. Geomni integrates with AIR's Touchstone® platform, which includes catastrophe models and portfolio assessments of catastrophe loss in real time.
What Makes Geomni Different
Geomni president Jeffrey C. Taylor said, "What differentiates Geomni's solutions are the deep commitment to constantly source fresh imagery on an unprecedented scale, investing in superior technology, our technical capabilities, and the proprietary data available within the Verisk enterprise. This gives us a comprehensive solution set that is truly unique."
Taylor noted that the fractured nature of many current solutions often leaves users with a static report on a limited part of the process. This information must then be manually transferred to other systems not designed to take advantage of the new geospatial technologies. "Only Geomni and Verisk can provide an end-to-end solution."
Other Geomni Markets
Geomni serves customers in the insurance market, with the opportunity to yield more than $200 million through imagery-based solutions. Geomni is also pursuing many promising applications in the multibillion-dollar yearly U.S. geospatial data market. This market includes verticals such as engineering, construction, utilities, government, infrastructure, and others.
Geomni provides mapping professionals and departments important terrestrial data that supports their need to accurately understand our ever-changing world. From forestry to coastal change, landfill monitoring to landslide prediction, Geomni is currently serving, and will continue to serve, customers through thousands of new projects over the coming year-each using the latest technologies in aircraft efficiency and sensor design.
About Geomni
Geomni, a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) business, provides the world's most efficient multitier, multispectral terrestrial imagery and data acquisition, processing, analytics, and distribution-offering the best value through operational excellence.
Using the latest remote sensing and machine learning technologies, Geomni gathers, stores, processes, and delivers geographic and spatially referenced information that supports uses in many markets, including insurance, commercial property, energy, banking, architecture, engineering, emergency response, urban planning, and much more.
Mapping professionals and firms can use the data to accurately understand growth and change, determine damage, discover hazards, assess risk, perform valuations, and much more. Geomni data, tools, and services provide users with critical solutions that protect people, property, and financial assets. For more information, please visit Geomni.net.
About Verisk Analytics
Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) is a leading data analytics provider serving customers in insurance, natural resources, and financial services. Using advanced technologies to collect and analyze billions of records, Verisk Analytics draws on unique data assets and deep domain expertise to provide first-to-market innovations that are integrated into customer workflows. Verisk offers predictive analytics and decision support solutions to customers in rating, underwriting, claims, catastrophe and weather risk, global risk analytics, natural resources intelligence, economic forecasting, and many other fields. Around the world, Verisk Analytics helps customers protect people, property, and financial assets.
Headquartered in Jersey City, N.J., Verisk Analytics operates in 27 countries and is a member of Standard & Poor's S&P 500® Index. In 2017, Forbes magazine named Verisk Analytics to its America's Best Mid-Size Employers list and, in 2016, to its World's Most Innovative Companies list. Verisk is one of only six companies to appear on both lists. For more information, please visit www.verisk.com.
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Verisk Analytics, Inc.
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Rich Tauberman
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