Willis Towers Watson’s Willis Research Network (WRN) has announced a partnership with Cloud to Street, a global flood-mapping and monitoring platform designed for governments, humanitarian organisations and private-sector firms to manage flood risk, underpin risk financing, and respond to catastrophic floods in near real time.
The new partnership will make use of Cloud to Street’s high-resolution satellite and machine-learning flood-monitoring technology and dynamic analytics systems, which include near real-time flood monitoring and flood mapping, WRN said.
The partnership will work to address the insurance gap in the developing world, where 90% of economic losses from disasters are uninsured. Willis Re and Cloud to Street have worked together for the past two years to expand insurance coverage in Indonesia. New projects are planned in Africa later this year, WRN said.
“We are very pleased to welcome Cloud to Street into the Willis Research Network and look forward to working together through our Climate Resilience Hub,” said Simon Young, senior director at Willis Towers Watson. “We will collaborate on researching and developing tools to better understand flood risk and its real-time manifestation around the world. This will enable us to build and implement innovative risk-transfer tools to better serve the needs of current and future clients across both public and private sectors, and from individual homeowners and farmers to corporate supply chains and sovereign governments.”
“While working with governments and insurers in almost 20 countries, we have seen firsthand the urgent need for innovative disaster financing and new insurance products around flooding,” said Bessie Schwarz, co-founder and CEO of Cloud to Street. “We’re thrilled to partner with Willis Towers Watson to scale Cloud to Street’s flood technology and bring reliable parametric flood insurance to the governments we support and many others. Together, our combined expertise will enable us to offer insurance tools that mitigate the economic impact of flooding for communities throughout Africa and the world.”
