The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to attempt to close what has been called the "largest financial protection gap in the world," the impact of a large U.S. earthquake on a major population center. The public is woefully unprepared for the consequences of such an event, banking on government assistance rather than personal resilience. In California alone, there are 3-4 million uninsured seismically vulnerable homes and 1 million uninsured vulnerable businesses. Of 1-3 million homes in need of strengthening, only about 20,000 are seismically retrofitted each year. Part of the problem is that insurance companies calculate the likelihood of a payout for a policy, but homeowners cannot, so homeowners lack the means to act in their own best financial interests. The free and ad-free mobile app under development for this project uses public data and methods to explain a home's seismic risk and to show the benefits of buying a seismically safer home, retrofitting an older home, or purchasing earthquake insurance. Most important, it does so without scaring, soothing, or snowing the user. Homebuyers can use the app at open houses and also at the residences of family members.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project has three principle objectives: (1) The seismic hazard estimates will account not only for earthquake shaking, but also for whether a home lies on a steep slope or in a liquefaction, landslide, or fault zone, which increase the damage potential. With this enhancement, insurance will be more economical than retrofit in some locations because it is expensive to retrofit in a landslide or liquefaction zone. (2) The technology will combine several real-time data streams to predict the earthquakes that app users have just felt, notifying them within tens of seconds. With this feature, the company aims to provide the fastest, most personalized, most useful, and most accurate earthquake notifications ever achieved. (3) The app will include a global earthquake forecast, so that anyone on Earth with a mobile phone can learn their earthquake exposure. This forecast is based on the first and only independently tested, published, and globally uniform earthquake occurrence model. App users can learn about the largest earthquake they are likely to experience in their lifetime, and how to take action to protect themselves and their families.
