Improving Post-Earthquake Insurance Claim Management: A Novel Approach to Prioritize Geospatial Data Collection

Abstract

With a population exceeding 14 million and a GDP of more than 300 billion USD, Istanbul dominates the Turkish economy. Unfortunately, this concentration of social and economic assets is permanently threatened by potentially devastating earthquakes, given the city’s close proximity to several well-known fault systems. As a measure to mitigate the consequences of such events, and to increase the resilience of the exposed communities, the Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool (TCIP) has been set up to provide affordable and reliable earthquake insurance to households all over the country. In the aftermath of a damaging event, especially in Istanbul, the operational capacity of TCIP will be seriously challenged by the high number of claims whose settlement would have to be swift and fair in order to kick-start the recovery process. In this paper we explore an integrated approach based on mobile mapping and ad hoc prioritization techniques to streamline the data collection and analysis process, with application to both the pre-event and post-event phases. Preliminary results obtained in Besiktas, a populous district of Istanbul, are presented and discussed.

Keywords

• seismic risk
• earthquake insurance
• geo-spatial information
• Istanbul
• prioritization