INSURANCE rates across the region could plummet, saving homebuyers and insurers millions, with the launch of the Caribbean Disaster Risk Atlas. The atlas will provide up-to-date and verified information on natural hazards facing the region that will help accurately assess the risk of those seeking and proving insurance.

The data will be good and consistent, said Dr Simon Young of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), which will help to determine if the prices for hurricane and earthquake coverage are reasonable or “may show that an area is riskier than thought”.

Information is valuable, Young said, and what we have been doing for the past decade or so is gathering and processing it to see how it will affect development. “Is it safe? Is it built next to the sea and prone to storm surges, or beside a river and prone to flooding?”

The economic impact of natural disasters on Jamaica has been between US$1.4 billion ($124 billion) and US$1.7 billion since 2001, said David Smith, coordinator of the UWI’s Sustainable Development Unit and chief investigator on the atlas project.

Caribbean populations are especially vulnerable to disasters because so much of the infrastructure is located near the coasts or on flood plains, Smith said. This is made worse by the high levels of poverty throughout the region, which limit the ability to build proper structures.

Furthermore, assessments, such as those given in the atlas, will make people aware of how to ensure that new constructions are built to code and that they can withstand natural disasters.

The Digicel building in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, is an example to be modelled, Young said, as it withstood the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010, which left 316,000 people dead, almost completely intact.

The regional approach taken in doing the atlas was necessary, Young said, as it allows the combination of expertise from several islands.

What’s more, smaller islands that would not be able to generate the capacity to carry out a project of this nature alone will benefit from the effort put out by larger islands such as Jamaica.

While a reduction in insurance rates will not be immediate or solely the result of the atlas’ introduction, that’s ultimately where the sector is headed, he insisted. The value that people will get out of it is bigger than if it were done by one country, as experienced with the CCRIF.

The organisation assists regional governments by providing short-term funds when a disaster strikes, such as the US$7.8 million it lent to the Government of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

The project, which looked at 10 islands, was funded with US$510,000 from the World Bank and was implemented by the University of the West Indies.