July 15, 2009
San Diego, California—Balboa Insurance Group received a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award today at the 2009 ESRI International User Conference (ESRI UC) in San Diego, California. The organization received this honor for its vision, leadership, and innovative use of ESRI’s geographic information system (GIS) technology. Balboa Insurance Group was selected from more than 300,000 organizations worldwide and recognized during today’s SAG awards ceremony for making extraordinary contributions to our global society.
Balboa Insurance Group (Balboa) uses GIS for a variety of tasks including managing risk accumulation, determining effective rates for various geographic regions, and visually representing risks so the executive management team can make timely and pragmatic decisions. Since implementing its GIS in 2005, Balboa developed the Catastrophe Manager web site as a tool for providing loss assessments to its Financial Institution clients.
The Catastrophe Manager Web site uses GIS technology to provide one-stop access to catastrophic news updates, data, and reports customized to clients’ portfolios. During the Southern California wildfires in late 2007, Balboa used GIS to map fire perimeters of the most impacted customers. They sent mobile claims units to these locations and assisted customers with filing claims on the spot. When Hurricane Ike hit the Texas gulf shores, GIS was used to assist residents in finding local claims offices, shelters, and hardware stores so they could begin clean-up and making repairs. In 2008, Catastrophe Manager monitored more than 50 severe events across the country.
The site also allows users the ability to access archived catastrophe information to help plan for future events. Balboa plans to expand Catastrophe Manager to include online analysis capabilities and automatic real-time updates, giving their lender clients the ability to see impacted areas in their portfolios.
"Our world is being challenged by rapid change,” says Jack Dangermond, ESRI president. “GIS technology is increasingly being deployed as a way to understand the issues facing our society. At ESRI, we are always extremely impressed with the work of our users and want to recognize their efforts with our Special Achievement in GIS Award. Their work is a great example of using GIS to improve our world."
GIS combines computer hardware, software, and data to collect, manage, and analyze geographic information. Virtually any information can be linked to a geographic location, helping people to see that information as part of a complete picture. With GIS, users can view relationships, processes, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts. Whether they are selecting routes to transport ethanol, or studying landslides, GIS helps them see how the world works and changes. More than one million people across the globe rely on GIS to solve problems and make better decisions by thinking and planning geographically.
Other organizations being honored at the ESRI UC include Artesia Water Company, Montana State Library, NASA Langley Research Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Yosemite National Park, City of Madrid, DHL Express, Polytechnic of Namibia, Victoria Police in Australia, and the Grammar School at Leeds.
To learn more about the 2009 SAG Award winners and to view their photos and project descriptions and images, visit www.esri.com/sag. More information about ESRI and its GIS solutions can be found at www.esri.com.
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Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically.
The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including
each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of
Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more
than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's
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