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].
Matt Hinds-Aldrich
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
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
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.
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
“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.”
Breaking Down Barriers Between the Fire Protection and Insurance Industries
Oct 20, 2022 / by Matt Hinds-Aldrich posted in Insights, Issues & Trends, Fire, AAIS News & Views, AAIS Insights, wildfire
Why Reporting Fire Data is Still Important
Feb 2, 2022 / by Matt Hinds-Aldrich posted in Community, Issues & Trends, Data & Technology, Tech News, Homeowners, Data, Fire, AAIS News & Views, AAIS Insights, Data/Tech, Insurance Line of Business
Dr. Matt Hinds-Aldrich, Senior Risk Strategy Lead at AAIS and fire peril subject matter expert, recently joined Tom Louis from First Due to discuss why the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) still matters and why it needs to improve to meets the needs of the 21st century fire service. Watch the entire discussion here:
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
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).
'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
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.
Wind or Water? Breaking Down Slab Claims After Hurricanes
Sep 15, 2021 / by Matt Hinds-Aldrich posted in Issues & Trends, Homeowners, New/Emerging Risks, P&C Insurers, AAIS Insights, Insurance Line of Business, Flood Insurance, flood, talent, risk mitigation, hurricanes, hurricane resource center, slab claim, risk awareness service, catastrophe, national flood insurance program, NatCats, AAIS Risk Awareness Service, AAIS Hurricane Resource Center, AAIS Hurricane Live Tracker
Risk Management Service Inc. (RMS) estimates $25 billion to $35 billion in onshore and offshore insured losses in the Gulf of Mexico alone were caused by Hurricane Ida. This doesn’t include the damage to other parts of the country. While the fundamentals of hurricanes are widely understood these days, there remain several important nuances to hurricane losses that are essential to understand for insurers, regulators, and the general public alike. Here we will look at one less understood type of claim from hurricanes – slab claims.
Learning From the Surfside Condo Collapse
Aug 10, 2021 / by Matt Hinds-Aldrich posted in openIDL, Technology, Issues & Trends, Data & Technology, Data Management/Distributed Ledger, Insurance News/Current Events, Blockchain, AAIS Insights, Data/Tech, AAIS Views, wildfire, NatCats
The collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, Florida, shocked the nation, starting a much-needed conversation about the importance of risk mitigation. As the events unfolded, we learned that the information about the significant risk of collapse was known—to some—but simply went unheeded.