GeoFIS: Flood Insurance System for Trinidad

GeoFIS: Flood Insurance System for Trinidad - A Case Study for San Juan Downstream

(Version 8/3/07)  

F. Canisius and C. Nancy

ABSTRACT: Flood is one of the severe and common natural perils risking life and property in every corner of the world and has become more frequent in resent years due to increasing human intrusion in the environment. Damages caused by flood create great loss to individuals and it is difficult to recover from impacts. Since there are many factors that influence the flooding and cannot be prevented there is no other better way to quickly recover from financial loss than insuring properties. Flood insurance is providing financial protection against losses from flooding. In some countries, though flood insurance is available still the individuals could not able to obtain flood insurance or facing prospect of higher premium. This is because insurance companies charge premium based on region rather than location of individual house. In case of Trinidad, very general traditional way of premium calculation is in practice combined with standard property insurance. By integrating GIS to flood insurance flood risk of each and every individual private house can be evaluated and come up with reasonable premium. In this study GIS based flood insurance system was developed for Trinidad to handle flood insurance for private households and applied to San Juan Downstream to demonstrate feasibility to use the system. The system uses flood and house information from GIS database and client provided information to bring out reasonable premium based on business related variables from insurance companies. This will enable both parties of the insurance market to be benefited. 

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