HAILTRAK: Radar-based real-time assessment of hail damage for the insurance industry

Insurance company catastrophe (CAT) teams are charged with providing immediate response to policy holders after a natural disaster, such as a damaging hail storms. The magnitude of the CAT team response is dependant on the estimated amount of dollar damage caused by the hail storm and the possible number of claimants. Insurance companies have had a difficult time assesing these magnitudes especially in the first 12 hours after the disaster.

HMS has developed a WSR-88D based hail damage assessment tool, HailTrak, which has proven to be very useful to the insurnace industry in estimating the aerial extent, dollar damage and number of affected claimants. HailTrak provides a GIS mapped region of potential hail damage and a data base which can be related to similar GIS data bases of policy holders. A relational analysis of the two data bases can provide an estimate of the location of hail damage to assist assessors, and estimate of the number of policy holders affected and the potential dollar damage caused by the hail.

HailTrak uses a HMS-developed equation to relate base reflectivity values of 55 dBZ and greater to estimated hail size. The equation uses the surface to 500MB precipitable water index, an integrated updraft stability index, depth of the cloud updraft warmer than 0C, cloud depth and cloud layer estimated wind shear to calculate a maximum hail size. The maximum hail size is assigned to 70dBZ or greater reflectivities and hail sizes are then "down-stepped" to lower reflectivity values through 60 DBZ. Reflectivities of 60dBZ or greater are then re-mapped into a "HailTrak" in Map Info Pro GIS grid format, an Excel 7.0 spreadsheet or similar GIS grid. In some cases the HailTrak is mapped and relateed to seven digit zip code zones for use by the insurnace company. HailTraks are emailed by Internet to insurnace companies and displayed on product specific web pages for use by agents in the field.

The HailTrak has proven to be commercially successful and has been used in an evolving form since 1992. Examples of HailTraks will be shown at the conference.