AIR Teams With Shanghai Typhoon Institute

Boston-based AIR Worldwide Corp. catastrophe modeling firm announced today that it will collaborate on typhoon research with the Shanghai Typhoon Institute.

AIR said the studies with STI would investigate the atmospheric and hydrologic characteristics of landfalling typhoons in China and the findings would be used to enhance AIR's new China typhoon model.

The announcement is AIR's second in two weeks involving collaboration with a Chinese institution. On May 21 the firm said it was teaming with the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design to better understand the vulnerability of buildings in China and create an earthquake model.

Research with STI will examine the evolution of typhoons and their associated precipitation, AIR said.

Xudong Liang, deputy director of the Shanghai Typhoon Institute, said the “collaboration will advance our understanding of typhoon risk in China and provide information that is vital in keeping with the country's need to prepare for and mitigate the impact of natural disasters.”

STI's mission is to improve the understanding of tropical storms–specifically the mechanisms that influence their formation, track, structural evolution and landfall location–to apply this information to studies submitted by various governmental, administrative or operational organizations.

AIR said that as part of the research, STI will perform a detailed analysis of the major historical typhoons that made landfall in China. For each storm, STI will examine the genesis, track, maximum observed windspeeds and accumulated precipitation and perform an in-depth analysis of the environmental factors that influenced the evolution of the wind and precipitation fields.

Uday Virkud, P.E., senior vice president at AIR Worldwide, said the collaborative research will enable the firm “to bring the most up-to-date science on China typhoons to our insurance industry clients, which will help manage their portfolio of risks.”

AIR models natural catastrophes in more than 40 countries and the risk from terrorism in the United States. The firm is one of the Jersey City, N.J.-based Insurance Services Office businesses.

STI was set up based on the former Shanghai Meteorological Institute. Its mission is to undertake basic and applied researches related to tropical cyclones.

AIR said the newly established STI aims to become a top-level tropical cyclone research institution in China and an internationally recognized organization within the next five to 10 years, and a base for training professional personnel specialized in tropical cyclone science.