CAPE Wildfire Intelligence

CAPE Wildfire Intelligence is a property-level wildfire risk product from CAPE Analytics, now part of Moody's, built for property insurers, MGAs and reinsurers. Wildfire losses are rising (the provider cites more than 60,000 US structures lost between 2016 and 2020), and carriers need risk views more granular than regional hazard maps.

CAPE applies computer vision and machine learning to high-resolution imagery from multiple providers, which its partners collect by airplane and satellite, and combines the results with property records and hazard data. In October 2022 CAPE added Maxar's high-resolution satellite imagery through the SecureWatch API. This improved recency in rural and wildland-urban interface areas and completed full US coverage.

The product returns four ratings. The Overall Risk Rating merges regional hazard with address-level vulnerability. The Hazard Score covers wind zones, rainfall, historic wildfire perimeters and fuel loads. The Vulnerability Rating draws on vegetation in the defensible-space zones, building density and construction features such as roof material and wood decks. Mitigation Potential is the property's vulnerability once the owner completes mitigation, so carriers can show the effect of mitigation on risk and rate. A commercial edition scores individual structures and aggregates them for multi-structure properties.

The ratings are built on research from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), and the API can report IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home status for California homes to carriers that are IBHS members. Since July 2023 CAPE's wildfire mitigation data has also included community-boundary information from the NFPA's Firewise USA program, giving underwriters a community-level view of mitigation. Results are delivered through an API, batch runs and CAPE's web application. Hippo Insurance is a named user, and Juniper Re uses CAPE's wildfire data in its catastrophe analytics platform.