AIR Worldwide is rolling out beefed up earthquake and typhoon models for Southeast Asia.

The catastrophe modeling firm, a Verisk Analytics business, said the earthquake model updates cover:

• Tsunami and liquefaction subperils for Indonesia, the Philipplines and Taiwan.
• A new precipitation-induced flooding built using high-resolution data, and a probabilistic storm surge model for Hong Kong, the Philipplines and Taiwan.
• An expanded model domain that now includes Guam, Macau, Saipan and Vietnam for typhoon risk; Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Malaysia for earthquake risk.

Jayanta Guin, executive vice president and chief research officer at AIR Worldwide, noted in prepared remarks that Southeast Asia has some of the fastest growing economies but also some of the riskiest earthquake regions. This, Guin said, makes it particularly helpful to have enhanced catastrophe models for the region.

“It’s seismically one of the most active regions in the world, with earthquakes of magnitude 8.0 or larger occurring once every eight to 10 years on average,” Guin said, also noting that the Northwest Pacific gets struck with more than 25 tropical cyclones annually.

Source: AIR Worldwide