Berkeley Charlton, chief product manager at Smarty
Why are mailing addresses unreliable when natural disasters occur?
Natural disasters can be very specific in their zone of destruction, so while you may have a mailing address at hand, mailing addresses don’t provide location context in relation to something like a wildfire or a sinkhole. Geocoding, on the other hand, allows us to know specifically where a property is located on a lot, and whether or not it is susceptible to a natural disaster by giving us more insight into the physical location and its proximity to a disaster. For instance, if a lot of land is sloped, then the area with a higher elevation might be safe from flooding, whereas the area with a lower elevation might be at risk of harm.
According to Smarty’s data, mailing addresses are missing over 5% of the addresses that are out there. Some communities may have residences with parcel delivery addresses that big shipping companies can deliver to, but the physical property address isn’t typically found in address searches. In a storm or flood, these mailing addresses may lead to confusion and an inability to locate individuals at a property.
Why is geocoding critical during a natural disaster for emergency response and recovery efforts?
Geocoding is critical during a natural disaster for emergency response and recovery efforts particularly for two reasons: predictions and investigations. For one, rooftop geocoding can tell individuals where a disaster occurs and accurately predict which properties were affected. For instance, with hurricanes, people can usually predict where the storm will go, but not the path they will take until they land, and people don’t know which properties were damaged until after the fact. However, with geocoding, insurers and emergency personnel can create a model of affected properties by looking at the land that was impacted and gathering geocoding data to see which properties were there.
Additionally, with geocoding, insurers and emergency responders can be more immediate with outreach. For example, during Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of homes were destroyed and road signs were ripped off. It was nearly impossible for first responders to get a sense of their location because there was nothing that helped identify the space. Emergency personnel didn’t know where to go, and adjusters inspecting damages didn’t know what property they were at. However, with technology like Smarty’s reverse geocoding, emergency responders and adjusters can take their longitude and latitude and use it to find out the exact location of a property and the address attached to that location.
How are mailing addresses translated to geocoding APIs?
Geocoding is the process of finding geographical latitude and longitude coordinates for a mailing address. With the refined accuracy of rooftop geocoding, mailing addresses are validated and then matched to specific rooftop coordinates that have been pre-calculated from a variety of authoritative sources, such as E-911 data and building polygons derived from satellite imagery.
This is the process Smarty uses to take every mailing address and non-postal address and match that data to every structure in the United States.
How can geocoding and predictive models help identify areas that may be at risk for natural disasters?
Geocoding APIs can be used to identify high-risk areas before a natural disaster strikes, and can be used to create predictive models that can indicate the likelihood that a property will be impacted by a natural disaster. How close is the primary structure to vegetation, to a floodplain, or to a coastline, and what types of buildings are on the property? For example, based on a property’s location on a mountain, there’s a 5% chance a wildfire will hit that property. Or based on how far away a property is from the coast line, there’s a 25% chance that the property is susceptible to flooding from a hurricane.
While location plays a critical role in risk models, risk also varies depending on the type of structure and materials used to build the property, as some are more susceptible to damage than others. Predictive models are then scored high, medium, or low depending on the risk.
The return on investment for rooftop and street level geocoding is very high, and is extremely valuable to insurance companies pricing risk. Accurate rooftop geocoding delivered by Smarty allows insurance companies to pinpoint property insurance risk with exactness, without the significant expense of time and money that in-person inspections require.
