Inland Flood Model

KatRisk's Inland Flood Model is a probabilistic catastrophe model that estimates riverine (fluvial) and rainfall-driven surface-water (pluvial) flood risk for insurers and reinsurers. Instead of statistical approximations, it uses physically based hydrologic and hydraulic simulation to represent how water moves across terrain and drainage systems, producing flood depths, risk scores, average annual losses and return-period losses at property, account and portfolio level.

Property- and portfolio-level loss modelling covers the US, Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, on 10 m terrain in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and 10-30 m terrain elsewhere. The July 2026 Canada update runs on KatDEM, a single 10 m terrain model that uses HRDEM lidar where it exists and, elsewhere, an enhanced version of the Copernicus DEM (~30 m), a satellite elevation model acquired by the TanDEM-X radar mission, with forest and building removal and river hydro-conditioning applied.

The 50,000-year event catalogue is modulated by sea-surface-temperature signals such as El Nino and La Nina, correlates flood with other perils and regions, and supports current and future climate scenarios. Vulnerability curves and defence assumptions can be modified, and KatRisk states that loss analytics run up to 30x faster than the competition. The model is run through KatRisk's SpatialKat and SoloKat software and APIs, and inside Verisk Model Exchange. KatRisk has served as risk modelling calculation agent for $2.2B in FEMA/NFIP catastrophe bonds; published users include Neptune Flood, Wright Flood, Vave and Acrisure Re.