NATHAN

Transparency is one of the main factors in successful risk management. In developing NATHAN, Munich Re has created a pioneering technology for the "geographical underwriting" of natural-hazard risks.

Reinsurance business today demands ever more precise estimates of the threats posed by natural hazards and their ramifications. Only reinsurers who calculate appropriate prices for current and future risks will have long-term success and be able to survive in the international markets.

In order to meet current and future market requirements for competitive risk management, the Geo Risks Research Centre of Competence has worked for several years on the development of a "geographical underwriting" approach which uses geocoded portfolio and loss data to perform highly precise spatial/geographic portfolio analyses.

The online application NATHAN (NATural Hazards Assessment Network) is based on the "World of Natural Hazards" CD-ROM that was originally published in 2000 and has undergone continual further development since then. With over 100,000 copies distributed, the NATHAN CD-ROM is the largest single publication in Munich Re's over 125-year history. NATHAN's unique collection of data represents the essence of the expert knowledge of natural catastrophes gathered by the Geo Risks Research team in more than 30 years of worldwide research.

We want to share this knowledge with the public: a "light" version of NATHAN without insurance-market statistics or information on insured losses and insurance zones (CRESTA) can now be accessed at our website.

What makes NATHAN special is its geographically referenced data and display capabilities: with the "Hazard Pointer", users can call up qualitative estimates of the natural-hazard situation at any desired point on the earth's land surface. The new city database lets users select from about 600,000 locations and urban regions.

Risk assessment with NATHAN yields results that are helpful in creating insurance products, setting premiums and making holistic assessment decisions about specific locations.

NATHAN is composed of three modules:

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  "Natural Hazard Maps" that use the interactive world map to depict the precise distribution of natural hazards and their respective intensities
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  The "Major Disasters" module, which provides information on the recurrence intervals of natural catastrophes in defined areas and offers a variety of sorting options for generating clearly organised reports
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  The "Country Profiles" module, a detailed lexicon that provides a statistical overview of the geography, population, economy and natural-hazard situation of countries around the world and thus supports decision-making processes

>> Start interaktive application NATHAN

Our client portal connect.munichre offers registered cedants an enhanced version including insurance-relevant zones (CRESTA).

>> Information on connect.munichre