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Phase II
Temblor, Inc.
-
Temblor, Inc.
SBIR Phase II: Temblor--an innovative, mobile source of seismic risk understanding and solutions for the public and providers
Contact
119 Scenic Dr
Redwood City, CA 94062-3232
NSF Award
1853246 – SBIR Phase II
Award amount to date
$800,000
Start / end date
04/15/2019 – 03/31/2021
Errata
Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf.gov.
Abstract
The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to attempt to reduce the largest financial protection gap in the world: the impact of a great earthquake on a major population center. The public is woefully unprepared for such an event, banking on government assistance in lieu of personal resilience. Worldwide, there is $400 billion in uninsured global disaster risk. Even in California, there are 3-4 million uninsured seismically vulnerable homes and a million uninsured vulnerable businesses. People need to understand their vulnerability in terms of dollars and safety, they need to learn how they can protect themselves and their families, and most important, they need to be inspired to take action. This project's free mobile app and blog use public data and models to explain a home's seismic risk, and to show the benefits of buying a seismically safer home, retrofitting an older home, or buying earthquake insurance. Most important, the app and blog do so without scaring, soothing, or snowing the user.
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is building a suite of global seismic hazard and risk models that enable the company to forecast the consequences of earthquakes to any building, anywhere on Earth. At every step in the process, the technology rids the models of bias, judgment, or expert opinion, relying instead on algorithmic, reproducible and testable constructs. The company provides insurance agents with sales tools, giving a home or building owner's earthquake score and financial losses in the largest likely earthquake. It provides insurance companies with the means to underwrite (price) insurance, to assess the average annual losses of their portfolios, or to assess portfolio losses at any likelihood of occurrence. For a catastrophe bond whose payment is triggered by a shaking intensity, the company provides the likelihood of attachment over any time period. For a reinsurance company, it provides the ability to compare losses at any or all locations. For a mortgage lender, it provides mortgage portfolio losses, and an estimate of mortgage defaults in the scenario earthquakes to which the lender is most vulnerable. For a multinational company with globally distributed facilities, the technology assesses and ranks their worldwide risk to enhance their resilience.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Phase I
Temblor, Inc.
-
Temblor, Inc.
SBIR Phase I: Temblor--an innovative, mobile source of seismic risk understanding and solutions for the public and providers
Contact
119 Scenic Dr
Redwood City, CA 94062-3232
NSF Award
1648595 – SBIR Phase I
Award amount to date
$225,000
Start / end date
12/15/2016 – 08/31/2017
Errata
Please report errors in award information by writing to awardsearch@nsf.gov.
Abstract
The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to attempt to close what has been called the "largest financial protection gap in the world," the impact of a large U.S. earthquake on a major population center. The public is woefully unprepared for the consequences of such an event, banking on government assistance rather than personal resilience. In California alone, there are 3-4 million uninsured seismically vulnerable homes and 1 million uninsured vulnerable businesses. Of 1-3 million homes in need of strengthening, only about 20,000 are seismically retrofitted each year. Part of the problem is that insurance companies calculate the likelihood of a payout for a policy, but homeowners cannot, so homeowners lack the means to act in their own best financial interests. The free and ad-free mobile app under development for this project uses public data and methods to explain a home's seismic risk and to show the benefits of buying a seismically safer home, retrofitting an older home, or purchasing earthquake insurance. Most important, it does so without scaring, soothing, or snowing the user. Homebuyers can use the app at open houses and also at the residences of family members.
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project has three principle objectives: (1) The seismic hazard estimates will account not only for earthquake shaking, but also for whether a home lies on a steep slope or in a liquefaction, landslide, or fault zone, which increase the damage potential. With this enhancement, insurance will be more economical than retrofit in some locations because it is expensive to retrofit in a landslide or liquefaction zone. (2) The technology will combine several real-time data streams to predict the earthquakes that app users have just felt, notifying them within tens of seconds. With this feature, the company aims to provide the fastest, most personalized, most useful, and most accurate earthquake notifications ever achieved. (3) The app will include a global earthquake forecast, so that anyone on Earth with a mobile phone can learn their earthquake exposure. This forecast is based on the first and only independently tested, published, and globally uniform earthquake occurrence model. App users can learn about the largest earthquake they are likely to experience in their lifetime, and how to take action to protect themselves and their families.
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