On July 14, Ajilon submitted a paper to the Natural Disaster Insurance Review (NDIR) board, the national inquiry body setup by Federal Parliament to investigate the insurance industry and its related failings as a result of this year’s Queensland and Victorian floods.
The paper, prepared by the NSW team with support from NSW GM Annabel, is in response to the NDIR Issues Paper released in June.
According to NSW Associate Director Victor Jiang, who led the drafting and publication of the paper, the opinion it puts forth articulates a strong point of view around the development of a nationally consistent and integrated Natural Disaster Risk-Mapping Portal.
“The whitepaper we prepared articulates the benefits and feasibility of a single national portal that can map out aggregated sets of disaster risk data, categorised by disaster type and capable of drilling down to an individual property level. To have this information publicly available at a national level creates a level playing field for consumers, insurers, community organisations and all levels of governments, by increasing their risk awareness and encouraging better coordinated risk-mitigation activities.”
Victor says this risk-mapping solution is also central to improving insurance coverage before the event and reducing the impact of disasters after the event.
“It is in Australia’s national interest to have a consistent and comprehensive Natural Disaster Risk-Mapping Portal, as continuing improvements in quality and availability of risk data will have a flow through effect to insurance availability and affordability across other forms of natural disasters.”
Victor says this represents the best opportunity to establish a critical foundation for building Australia’s natural disaster resilience, pointing out that a failure to undertake this now will represent a significant missed opportunity for this generation of the Australian public.
Through Ajilon’s paper, Victor and his team were able to put forward several additional beliefs:
- That the NDIR Panel is in an ideal position to instigate such a solution, as one of its key recommendations to Parliament.
- Ajilon is uniquely placed to assist the NDIR Panel to articulate this solution, based on its extensive geospatial and location intelligence capabilities, as well as extensive experience working with multiple government agencies to deliver integrated geospatial solutions.
Following the publication of Ajilon’s paper on the NDIR’s website, the NSW team analysed the other NDIR submissions, making some interesting observations.
“Out of the 40+ ‘key stakeholder’ submissions – defined as submissions from government bodies, major corporates or stakeholder groups – 75% explicitly advocate for a national flood risk mapping database or capability, with a view to improving mitigation activities and effectively reducing stockpiles of high-risk properties,” said Victor.
“Of these, 67% explicitly advocate such a database be available to the general public. The insurance industry, led by the Insurance Commission of Australia (ICA) and Australian Local Governments Association (ALGA), is strongly in favour of encouraging better flood/disaster mitigation through informed and integrated risk mapping.
“Clearly there is overwhelming demand and support for a national risk mapping solution. We are pursuing the opportunity to work with the NDIR panel in putting forward this proposal to Treasury and the Federal Parliament to gain support and funding."
Other key contributors to the paper were Ian Wrenford, David Hayward and Annabel Flynn.
Click here to download a PDF of the Ajilon NDIR Issues Paper. Click here to download a PDF of the Ajilon NDIR Public Whitepaper.