Worldwide insurance stress map

Method version insurance-stress-map-v1 · 18 October 2026

The Global Insurance map combines the original catastrophe monitor with worldwide physical hazards, warnings, military/conflict reporting and civil-unrest context. Reported insurance statistics retain their own financial definitions and reporting periods.

Original monitor data and icons

The eight original US catastrophe zones retain their centers, radius geometry, reference colors and source model fields. Original earthquake and fire markers, insurer/market rows, event arrays and heuristic alerts remain available in the new map’s Original monitor view and export. Matching USGS source events can appear once on the integrated map with links to their original appearances.

These circular catastrophe zones and their dollar exposure bands are authored legacy references. Their scores are heuristics and do not establish insured values, carrier underwriting footprints, catastrophe-bond spreads or losses. An advisory count can include a “no active tropical cyclone” bulletin. Original fire-cluster and market projections do not always supply individual observation times; a collection timestamp is not substituted for one.

Worldwide evidence layers

• Natural hazards and warnings: existing USGS earthquakes, NASA FIRMS thermal detections, NASA EONET event references, official weather/flood/volcano notices, cyclone products and tsunami-trigger context. Storm, flood, earthquake, fire, volcanic/ash, landslide, snow/ice, heat/cold, drought, wind/rain, lightning and other source-qualified families have distinct icons or filters where data is supplied.
• Warning and ash areas: original source polygons are retained. VAAC airborne-ash observations and forecasts keep their valid times and flight levels; forecast outlines are dashed. They are not ground ashfall deposits, evacuation zones or pyroclastic-flow footprints.
• Military and conflict reporting: public publisher/shared report records and the existing public drone dataset. Reported claims, denials and provisional records retain their original qualifications.
• Riots, protests and other civil unrest: topic-screened reporting. The categories describe report subject matter, including discussion or disputed claims, rather than confirming that a riot or protest occurred.
• Optional country pressure: existing country-risk news/keyword counts at country-reference anchors. These are reporting matches in the source’s stated news window, not verified incident counts.
• Optional provisional conflict history: UCDP monthly Candidate records. Use the 90-day view for dated historical coverage; collection today does not turn an older event into today’s military activity.
• Optional reference/weather context: existing authored conflict corridors and normal station/model weather information. Ordinary temperatures and forecast samples are kept distinct from disaster observations.

What a location means

Source points and areas retain their original geometry and location basis. An earthquake epicenter is not its damage footprint. A thermal cluster is not a verified wildfire perimeter. No new damage radius is generated around events.

Named cities, regions and countries in reporting can be shown as labelled reference anchors. They are not verified incident GPS locations. Publisher/source-country fallback pins are excluded, and an inferred city anchor is withheld if its matched place text is absent from the source title/excerpt. A country-text match can identify a subject or actor mentioned in a report, rather than the event’s location. Unresolved records stay in the evidence list.

The existing public UCDP violence projection lacks full geographic-precision metadata. Those records use source-country reference anchors, with original coordinates retained only as qualified source fields. Drone-source locality/area precision, when supplied, stays attached. Country filters use explicit source or named-country context; unassigned physical locations remain in the World view.

Clocks, filters and counts

The 1-, 7-, 30- and 90-day selections use source occurrence or publication time, according to the record’s time basis. Official upcoming warnings and forecasts retain their future validity. Capture, snapshot assembly and source time are separate. Unknown event dates remain unknown.

Expired warnings and source-stale event records are withheld by default and can be inspected as dated context. Authored catastrophe zones and corridor reference geometry can remain visible with a stale-model badge; their model fields are not relabelled current observations. Browser markers are checked again as their validity expires. Closed catalog events can remain recent historical observations within the selected window; “source-listed open” does not independently establish ongoing impact.

Clusters count map references. Multiple articles, providers or place references may describe the same event. Only exact source IDs/URLs are linked for deduplication; conflicting or differently scoped accounts are not silently resolved. Native source pagination and its snapshot checks are followed, subject to displayed record, geometry and response limits.

Insurance interpretation

These layers provide insurance-relevant context. They do not calculate insured losses, policy coverage, carrier exposure, reinsurance attachment/exhaustion, insolvency probabilities or a blended global insurance score. No automatic hazard-to-carrier allocation is performed. Existing OECD/EIOPA/World Bank insurance statistics and their review flags keep their original meaning.

A worldwide country directory does not mean complete current evidence for every country or peril. Missing coverage is not zero risk. Source status, original dates, exclusions and bounds are available in the map’s source panel and read-only data.

Sources and attribution

• USGS Earthquake Hazards Program; NASA FIRMS; NASA EONET and each linked original provider.
• Named official warning authorities, WMO/CAP feeds and Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres through the existing Natural Hazards services. Each record retains its source link and qualification.
• UCDP Candidate Events, CC BY 4.0; Hegre et al. (2020). Provisional event dates, revisions and uncertainty apply. Casualty estimates describe the coded event, not insured losses.
• Publisher and public-account rights apply to bounded report metadata and links. No private military command, owner tracking, private provider feed or credentials are included.
• Existing country/territory references and named-place source attribution remain attached; they are reference geography, not independent location verification.

Financial statistics retain the original Insurance World source and EIOPA attribution notices. Use the Sources & freshness and Definitions views for their distinct currency, period, reporting-domicile and provisional-data rules.