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    Matt Hinds-Aldrich

    Dr. Matt Hinds-Aldrich, or “Dr. Matt”, has led a number of national initiatives and projects to improve how fire departments across the country and globe collect, analyze, and use data to focus their efforts, improve their operations, and demonstrate their value. At AAIS, he helps lead the development, expansion, and adoption of the FLAMES (Fire Loss and Mitigation Evaluation Score) methodology for insurers to assess local fire protection and mitigation efforts. Dr. Matt previously worked for the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), leading the development of a new national fire data system, the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department as a Senior Management Analyst, and at Anna Maria College as an Assistant Professor and interim Fire Science Program Director. His Ph.D. research at the University of Kent (England) focused on occupational culture and specifically the much-lauded and lambasted concept of firefighter culture. He has researched and written extensively on the concept of behavioral economics in public safety and the unfortunate topic of firefighters arrested for setting fires. His work has appeared in several national and international publications and has been presented at major conferences across the U.S. and Britain.
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    Recent Posts

    Community Risk Reduction: A Paradigm Changing Public Fire Protection

    Apr 4, 2024 / by Matt Hinds-Aldrich posted in Community, New/Emerging Risks, Fire, Risk, risk mitigation, risk awareness service, FLAMES, AAIS Risk Awareness Service, Fire Mitigation

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    Over the past decade, there has been a new paradigm emerging in the American fire service. This paradigm shift is often referred to as Community Risk Reduction, or simply CRR. The genesis of this change comes from the British fire service, where in the early 2000s the central government mandated that local fire services meet challenging fire reduction targets or face substantial budget cuts. These fire reduction targets were initially dismissed as absurd by fire personnel who had seen limited success in their legacy fire prevention efforts and assumed people were going to continue to make bad choices and fires would continue to happen unabated. However, given that they were facing potentially daunting cuts, the fire services across the UK got creative. They figured out what strategies actually worked, and they started seeing substantial reductions in fires countrywide. What they originally dismissed as absurd ended up turning into a nearly 60% reduction in the total number of fires across the country and nearly a 40% reduction in primary dwelling fires[i] over the initial ten-year period. Meanwhile, during that same period, according to the NFPA’s annual fire loss reports, the number of fire incidents in the U.S. remained largely unchanged[ii].

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    Redefining Mobility & Risks of Battery Fires: Findings from an FDNY Symposium

    Nov 2, 2023 / by Matt Hinds-Aldrich posted in Technology, Issues & Trends, New/Emerging Risks, Fire, AAIS Insights, Risk, FLAMES, Battery Fires

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    We recently discussed the rapid proliferation of batteries in modern homes and businesses and the more worrying proliferation of fires associated with those batteries on AAIS Views. On October 12, 2023, the Fire Department for the City of New York (FDNY) hosted a one-day symposium titled, “A Conversation with the Insurance Industry About Lithium-Ion Batteries.” The intent of the symposium was to share the scope of the problem, the current state-of-the-art in mitigating these types of incidents, and a clarion call for insurers to join the fight in addressing this scourge.

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    Home Is Where the Battery Is

    Jul 17, 2023 / by Matt Hinds-Aldrich posted in Personal Lines, Technology, Issues & Trends, Insurance News/Current Events, Homeowners, New/Emerging Risks, Fire, AAIS Insights, Risk, AAIS FLAMES

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    “Check out my new drone. The camera and range are exceptional!”

    “I’ve been getting out of the house more than ever with this new e-bike, have you considered getting one?”  

    “Now that my solar array is complete, and I’ve connected the new 3000-watt home battery backup, I’m ready to go off-grid.”

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    Shifting the Data Sharing Paradigm with openIDL

    Jan 10, 2022 / by Matt Hinds-Aldrich posted in openIDL, Data & Technology, Data Management/Distributed Ledger, Tech News, Regulatory/Compliance, Modeling/Predictive Analytics, AAIS Insights, Data/Tech, Modeling/Actuarial

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    Clive Humby said it best with his oft-cited quote – “data is the new oil.” It is true that the value of data is in its refinement and synthesis into useful insights, tools, and products, all predicated on the existence of a complex infrastructure to share and transport data from where it is found (those with the data) to where the analysis occurs (those with the questions).

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    'Tis the Season for Community Involvement—and Advisory Councils

    Dec 20, 2021 / by Matt Hinds-Aldrich posted in Insights, Issues & Trends, Data & Technology, Homeowners, New/Emerging Risks, Modeling/Predictive Analytics, Fire, AAIS News & Views, AAIS Insights, Modeling/Actuarial, Insurance Line of Business, NatCats, Fire Advisory Council, AAIS FLAMES, AAIS Wildfire Resource Center

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    With the holidays and the end of the year upon us, it is the time to reflect upon the past year. And it is the time of year we tend to think about coming together, as a community, to share our experiences. In our case, I’m referring to AAIS’s product-focused advisory councils.

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