(Image source: Location, Inc.) 

Location, Inc. (Worcester, Mass.), a provider of location-based tools and services, has updated its predictive analytics, scores and heat maps for violent and property crimes in its SecurityGauge platform for 2016.

SecurityGauge’s annual crime update collects raw data reported from over 18,000 local law enforcement agencies across the U.S., and uses a relational database to assign reported crimes from every agency (e.g., municipal police, campus police, port authority, transit, etc.) to the localities for which they have law enforcement responsibility, a Location, Inc. statement reports.  The application then applies analytic models to predict the rates for major crime, with 33-foot resolution, across the United States.

Insurers who write general liability, habitational, manufactured homes, vacation rentals, and other programs can use SecurityGauge’s updated crime risk scores to streamline operations by eliminating risks in the early stages of the underwriting process, strategically route potentially fraudulent claims to special investigative units, or improve in-house or external modeling results, the vendor statement says.

Helping Carriers and Brokers

“SecurityGauge crime analytics are not only helping insurance carriers by improving operations and modeling, but they are also helping brokers as well,” comments Andrew Couture, VP of Sales, Location, Inc.  “Recently I had a conversation with a broker who had a client developing a brand new facility, which included a walk way along a river. When the broker alerted his client of their crime scores, they eliminated the walkway from their plans, increased their liability coverage and budgeted additional security for their parking garage.”

SecurityGauge crime data has been tested on over 10 million records and is used by over 20 insurance carriers, according to Location, Inc.  The vendor reports that its tools and services are accessed by over 44 million users.