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Howden Re and Temblor Enter Research Partnership to Enhance Turkish Earthquake Risk and Impact Assessment

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Howden Re announces a partnership with Temblor Inc. (“Temblor”), a leading catastrophe (“cat”) modelling company specialising in seismic hazard and risk assessment.
Temblor will provide Howden Re with access to their SiteAmp model, which will provide critical data-driven insights on both the susceptibility to and impact of earthquakes in Turkey. As part of the partnership, Howden Re’s Head of Model Research & Evaluation for International, Myrto Papaspiliou, will join Temblor’s Scientific Advisory Board.

With SiteAmp, Howden Re will greatly benefit from Temblor’s unique soil amplification models to better capture one of the key drivers behind the widespread damage observed during the 2023 Kahramanmaras events, that led to over $100bn in economic and $6.2bn in insured losses, and support with greater confidence risk management decisions of Turkish cedants.

Currently, Temblor has the most granular soil modelling capabilities on the market and, while the initial partnership will focus on Turkey, Howden Re and Temblor will explore expanding into additional earthquake-prone regions in Europe, Asia and South America.

Myrto Papaspiliou, Head of Model Research & Evaluation – International, Howden Re commented, “The 2023 events were yet another reminder of what the implications of a large earthquake in proximity to Istanbul could be and further underscored the importance of earthquake preparedness. We firmly believe it is fundamental to harvest the best science and data in order to overcome model limitations, support our clients in the quantification of their risk, and increase earthquake resilience. With that in mind, we are thrilled to partner with Temblor as we strongly believe that their offering uniquely enhances the modelling tools we currently have available in this region.”

This partnership comes as Howden expands its capabilities in the region and seeks to reinforce the extensive work already undertaken to bring the latest science and loss experience within the catastrophe modelling framework. Synthesising knowledge from the latest pan-European seismic hazard and risk studies (ESHM20 & ESRM20), detailed analytics and model calibration around the damage observations from the 2023 earthquakes in the region, and now Temblor’s groundbreaking SiteAmp model has allowed Howden Re to create a truly comprehensive and market leading view of risk for cedants in Turkey.

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