Brighton, UK, Jan 7, 2015 -- Ambiental Technical Solutions Limited, the global leader in flood modelling and prediction, has recently released its fourth generation UK flood dataset.
Covering 100% of the UK, with a full range of return periods, and incorporating the most up-to-date river flow and rainfall data, UKFloodMap4™ provides the most detailed flood maps currently available for the UK, greatly improving the way insurers assess flood risk at a building level. Responding to a need expressed by insurers, it also includes enhanced approaches for resolving off-floodplain risks.
Built using Flowroute-i™, Ambiental’s world-class flood modelling software, UKFloodMap4™ equips insurers with accurate, detailed and easy-to-understand flood information for all major sources of flooding: river, tidal, and surface water (pluvial), as well as reservoir and groundwater. It includes depth and velocity information at the individual property level, enabling more accurate and competitive technical pricing and loss accumulation estimation.
Dr. Justin Butler, MD of Ambiental, commented: “Flood risk in the UK has been increasing significantly, and recent research suggests this trend is likely to continue. The launch of UKFloodMap4, ahead of next year’s implementation of FloodRE, the new flood re-insurance scheme, is very timely. This new, fully updated dataset, will enable insurers to get a much more complete and accurate view of flood risk in the UK. Flooding cost the country over £1bn last year alone.
Feedback from our clients in the insurance market has shown that existing flood data products often fail to pick up significant volumes of ‘off floodplain’ risks, reducing our clients’ ability to price accurately so we decided to enhance the granularity and comprehensiveness of our UKFloodMap4 to address this need.
There is no single definitive flood risk data source used throughout the UK insurance industry, with individual companies often having different views of this growing risk. However, by deploying this dataset throughout the organisation, as well as to MGAs and brokers in a highly cost-effective manner – either stand-alone or in conjunction with other flood datasets – can greatly improve insurers’ risk selection/ management, understanding, and hence pricing, of uncertainty”.
David Martin, Ambiental’s Technical Director, observes: “We have included around 30% more rivers than in competing products and have completely re-modelled the entire UK landmass – involving over 1 Million hydraulic models! We have also used the latest and best available ‘LiDAR’ topographical data, together with the most current hydrological and river flow data from the UK’s leading flood research centre – the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH). We have scaled up our international flood mapping and modelling operations in recent years, enabling us to develop and distribute high-precision flood maps for almost any country in the world.”
In our pre-release testing and validation, UKFloodMap4™ has validated extremely well against recent UK flood events as can be seen from the image below. Here Ambiental’s UKFloodMap4™ flood outline (in blue) shows an excellent correlation to the July 2007 flood event approaching Tewksbury (red outline).
UKFloodMap4™ is 100% compatible with 3rd party underwriting platforms (including LexisNexis® and SpatialKey) and GIS set-ups.
Ambiental Technical Solutions Limited is based at the Sussex Innovation Centre in Brighton, UK. Originally founded in 1997 as a partnership of researchers at Cambridge University, Ambiental has rapidly grown to become a global leader in flood modelling and flood risk consultancy. Dr Justin Butler leads the company. He has a Ph.D. in flood modelling and applied mathematics from Cambridge University, and is a leading expert in environmental risk mapping and modelling.
At the core of the business is Flowroute-i™, Ambiental’s proprietary 2D+ flood model, which is a highly efficient, innovative, fast and easy-to-understand solution for predicting the depth, duration and extent of flood risk to individual properties. Today, Flowroute-i™ drives Ambiental’s Global FloodMap™ products that model river, storm surge and surface water flooding for at-risk areas and are used by major insurers, reinsurers and government bodies throughout the world.
Clients include: Chubb, Brit Insurance, AON Benfield, Suncorp, Willis, Aspen Re, The European Commission, BP, the European Space Agency, and the World Bank.
In 2013 Ambiental won The Best Environmental Industry Company Award at the Brighton and Hove Business Awards [BAHBAS] and repeated this achievement in 2014, also adding The Award for Business Beyond the City. Ambiental have also been finalists at the Sussex Business Awards two years running and won The Small Business Award in 2014.
Contact Details:
Company: Ambiental Technical Solutions Limited.
Address: Sussex Innovation Centre, Science Park Square, Brighton, BN1 9SB
Website: www.ambiental.co.uk
Contact: Justin Butler, Managing Director
Telephone: 01273 704 458
Mobile: 07989 601 417
Email: Email Contact
