MET OFFICE News
Release issued by COI News Distribution Service. 18 February 2009
A new service from
the Met Office, launched today, is designed to help insurance
companies improve their service regarding weather-related claims.
Traditionally, insurers have had to rely on a limited number of
weather observations and then estimate the weather in between.
ClaimCheck(tm), backed by innovative use of computer modelling,
builds a detailed picture of weather for any given hour right
across the country at a resolution of 2km, mapped to individual
postcode sectors.
Commenting on these developments, Met Office senior scientist,
Simon Jackson, said: "We use a wide variety of observing
instruments such as satellites and rainfall radar, as well as
physical models to build a more complete picture of the weather.
Over 10 million of these 'modelled weather analyses' are
used each day to supplement the traditional observing network."
Impacts from severe weather are expected to increase as our
climate changes with a coincidental increase in weather-related
property damage and claims. ClaimCheck(tm) allows insurers to
manage their claims - helping them provide a clearer, quicker and
fairer service for their customers. Designed around an easy-to-use
database ClaimCheck(tm) requires only a postcode and date to
provide all the relevant weather information needed to assess a claim.
Cathy Durston, head of Met Office Consulting, says this
scientific capability gives Met Office customers an edge, stating:
"We have for some time recognised the problem caused by the
limitations of traditional observing networks. The practice of
interpolating conditions based on limited observations is unsound
because of influences such as mountains and other geographic
features on the weather. ClaimCheck(tm) plugs the gaps in weather
reports providing insurers with the same quality information as
used by our forecasters."
ENDS
For more information please contact the Met Office Press Office
on 01392 886655
Notes to editors:
* The Met Office is the UK's National Weather Service,
providing 24x7 world-renowned scientific excellence in weather,
climate and environmental forecasts and severe weather warnings
for the protection of life and property.
* Met Office provides a number of products to help the finance
and insurance sector including European forecasts over a range of
timescales for energy trading and demand modelling, historical
weather observations data for model calibration and extreme
events, warnings services for extreme weather, and consultancy for
investment projects and climate change adaptation strategies.
* Typically the processing techniques used for ClaimCheck(tm) use
around 70,000 observations each hour with 1,000 surface
observations being augmented by observations from satellites,
aircraft and upper air stations, plus over 400,000 2 km resolution
radar rainfall observations.