Surviving the Mountain Fire: Faura Whitepaper

Abstract 

For the last two decades, wildfires have caused billions of dollars in damages and displaced thousands, but more resilient homes have been able to break through the mold and survive the majority of destruction. Previously, insurers have focused solely on where disasters are likely to take place and less on which individual assets will likely be left standing, leaving business and insights on the table. 

The abundance of property data proves to be extremely useful - now, companies must make that data work for them and make systems more segmented for more efficient decisions about property survival. Faura used live property data from October 2024, before the Mountain Fire occurred, to calculate the likelihood of structure damage and total loss. In addition to finding a significant six-point difference between the most survivable homes and least surviving buildings with the Faura model, our calculations predicted survival with 95% accuracy in the highest thresholds. 

We also calculated likelihood of damage, highlighting the importance of roof impact and exterior impact. Raising roof survivability from 49% to 68% would have bumped up scores to high survival, placing them in the upper percentile. The same is true with exterior scores; raising the overall score to around 54.2% improved likelihood of survival up to the higher thresholds.

You can view the full whitepaper results here.