RMS Releases New South Korea Probabilistic Return Period Flood Maps and Flood Scenario Catalog

NEWARK, Calif. - March 04, 2015 RMS, the world's leading catastrophe risk management firm, today announced that it has released its RMS South Korea Probabilistic Flood Maps and Scenario Catalog, providing the industry's only complete view of flood risk in South Korea. The flood maps and scenarios model all sources of precipitation driving flood risk - including monsoon-driven rainfall, which accounts for more than 50 percent of annual total insured losses in South Korea.

“Achieving an accurate representation of South Korea flood risk requires a model that captures both typhoon and monsoon-driven rainfall,” said Mark Moravek, model product strategy senior manager, RMS. “Most catastrophe models capture only one hazard – typhoon rainfall – which ignores a significant proportion of the risk. Last year’s Busan flood reminded the industry of the scale of loss that can be caused by a monsoon-driven flood.”

The South Korea Probabilistic Flood Maps and Scenario Catalog use a full hydrological-cycle modeling process to capture the antecedent conditions and sources of precipitation that drive all forms of flooding: surface and riverine. The flood maps are calibrated for urban drainage systems and include banded flood depths to allow for location-level hazard lookup, enabling users to better estimate and set potential damage factors to achieve a more accurate view of losses.

“Flood has a very strong hazard gradient; while one property may be flooded, another just a few meters away may escape flood damage because it’s on a slight elevation,” said Moravek. “The maps use a very high spatial resolution and high resolution digital surface model to generate a more complete representation of the flood risk, increasing the accuracy of underwriting and accumulation analysis.”

The South Korea Probabilistic Flood Maps can be used to set in-house underwriting guidelines and to monitor and manage exposure accumulations. The large-scale flood events included in the scenario catalog help unmask areas with high exposure and can be used to stress test portfolios. Both the flood maps and scenario catalog can be used in either RMS or third party applications.