Across the US, hundreds of drone pilots are checking damaged properties from the air after disaster has struck. Why? To check the legitimacy of insurance claims.
After hurricanes, wildfires or severe hailstorms, insurance companies find themselves inundated with calls from home-owners desperate to claim so that they can carry out repairs. To speed up the process, US-based Travelers has trained 550 members of its staff to pilot drones to verify such claims, rather than getting humans to do the potentially dangerous work of directly inspecting damaged buildings. The company operates across the 48 contiguous states, and says it plans to train at least 100 more pilots.
Travelers has been training its pilots since August 2016, when the US Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial drone regulations came into force, clarifying the rules around using drones. The firm has now clocked up more than 17,000 flights using DJI Phantom 4 drones, which are small quadcopters equipped with a 4K high-resolution camera.
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Drone flights are launched by Travelers’ pilots every day to check properties somewhere in the US, says Jim Wucherpfennig, from the company.
For example, in May, a storm in the north-east brought down trees near one client’s house. They reported damage to their roof, which was then confirmed by a quick drone flight, says Travelers.
Consequently, other insurers have also caught the drone bug. “It’s harder to find [insurance companies] that don’t have drone strategies for claims than ones that do,” says Ellen Carney, at market research company Forrester.
Finance and insurance firm AIG used drones after Typhoon Goni hit Japan in 2015. One client was concerned about water damage to the roof of their factory. It was important to fix the leak quickly, but an inspection would have been too dangerous for a human to carry out, so they sent a drone up instead.
The firm now regularly uses drones, such as in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, which affected the southern US last year.
Aerial imagery snapped by drones isn’t just pored over by people on the ground – companies are also increasingly using AI to tease out the pertinent detail. DroneDeploy, a software firm that works with various companies that fly drones, has developed a tool that automatically measures the area and pitch of roofs.
Insurers can use the software to quickly see what’s changed and reveal any damage, says Mike Winn at DroneDeploy.
Insurers using drones say they haven’t paid out any more or less in the end as a result of using the devices, but their costs are reduced and claims can be handled more quickly.
Will that make insurance cheaper for the customer? Don’t bank on it, says Carney.
Satellite eyes
Insurers also rely on satellite imagery to calculate how much a wildfire, hurricane or flood might cost them. EagleView, based in Washington State, scoops up 30 million aerial images every year from drones, planes and satellites. It also analyses the data for customers, including insurers.
“We are able to tell them whether or not that home is destroyed, or partially destroyed, based on machine learning,” says Randy Ishikawa at the firm.
Researchers at the University of Washington recently built same thing. A pre-print paper detailing how it works showed it can achieve near 100 per cent accuracy.
