As Sandy Approaches, Report Questions Whether We'll Know About the Next One

The New York Times reports that the fleet of hurricane-tracking satellites is aging, and could fail without a potential replacement for a year or longer.

About a year ago, I&T's Anthony O'Donnell asked: Could the insurance industry do what NOAA does? Well, it may have to, if a situation reported in The New York Times as Hurricane Sandy approached the East Coast comes to pass.

The Times says that:

Experts have grown increasingly alarmed in the past two years because the existing polar satellites are nearing or beyond their life expectancies, and the launch of the next replacement, known as J.P.S.S.-1, has slipped to 2017, probably too late to avoid a coverage gap of at least a year.

This could cripple weather authorities' ability to monitor and track major catastrophe events — and with it, insurers' ability to prepare for them.

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio