The Japan earthquake and tsunami revealed a flaw in catastrophemodelers' planning, as modelers pointed to the fact that they didnot account for the complete devastation that hit the islandnation.

In its report earlier this week that estimated between $15 billion and $35 billion in property losses from thequake, Boston-based AIR Worldwide said it does not include suchevents as took place in Japan last week in its models.

"…the AIR Earthquake Model for Japan does not account for theeffects of tsunami," AIR said. "As more detailed informationbecomes available, AIR plans to independently estimate the loss dueto tsunami and provide a combined loss estimate that avoidsdouble-counting in the affected areas."

Robert Muir-Wood, chief research officer for risk-modeler RiskManagement Solutions, told NU that for some modelstsunamis are a "deterministic footprint," but are not generally apart of catastrophe modeling.

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan will "very likely" maketsunamis a fundamental part of catastrophe modeling in the future,he said.

There are two reasons why tsunamis, especially in Japan, werenot a part of catastrophe models, Mr. Muir-Wood said. First, thegovernment has spent a lot of money on sea walls that were thoughtto protect the populace from such an event. But the recent wave"came clear over the top."

Second, the area of concern was with Tokyo bay, where it wasthought a tsunami would not be a significant problem.

"People believed that this was not such a big risk," hesaid.

For modeling purposes, tsunamis would only be a concern if theywere an extreme loss event, noted Mr. Muir-Wood, and thisparticular event was not only extreme, but very rare. The last suchtsunami of this magnitude in Japan was recorded 1,100 yearsago.