When Mike Fitzgerald, an insurance technology expert, talks about geospatial technology and its applications in property/casualty insurance, he finds it challenging to restrain his enthusiasm about the subject.
“I really do view this as the next big thing—on the order of the Internet, on the order of mobile phones,” said Fitzgerald who is the guest editor for the content of this edition devoted to the current and potential uses of geospatial information systems in insurance. With insurers now able to access data from cameras and sensors positioned aboard satellites, drones and manned airplanes, to store the information in the cloud, and to use artificial intelligence to apply what sensors capture to the business problems of insurance, “we can’t even imagine how we’re going to take advantage of it,” he said.