Awinter nor’easter, described in the media as “snowzilla” because of its historic proportions, slammed the U.S. mid-Atlantic states on a January weekend in 2016, dumping more than 2 ft of snow on New York City. At times, winds exceeded 35 mph. Among the projects where heavy accumulations had to be shoveled the following Monday was Manhattan’s sprawling Hudson Yards mixed-use development. Photos (see cover) show crews doing the shoveling and a crane being used to remove the snow.

目前尚不清楚在那里工作的承包商是否受到导师佩里尼公司（Tutor Perini Corp.）的影响，因为上市公司的财务报告包含有关天气如何影响收入和盈利能力的标准警告。该公司的文件并没有特别提及暴风雪，该公司没有回来置评。

但是，由于国家气象局修复最终总计花费的时间，弄清楚实际下雪的并发症可以欣赏到多少。暴风雨发生四个月后，该部门宣布了该市中央公园和附近的纽瓦克（N.J.）自由国际机场的读数略有关闭，这归咎于测量错误和误解。

可靠的天气数据是参数天气保险的核心，这是保险公司和经纪公司认为可以吸引人的一种流行形式的覆盖范围，并减轻了建筑和工程领域的人们的风险。虽然可靠的数据并不总是100％清楚，但是在气候变化和更动荡的天气模式的更强迹象中，这种覆盖范围特别重要。

“We are seeing parametric insurance gradually taking off,” says Nigel Brook, a partner at Clyde & Co., a London-based legal practice. “It’s not the kind of thing where a customer says ‘I want parametric insurance.’ It is usually a thing they find their way indirectly to.”

天气insurance of all kinds has a long track record in energy, agriculture, events and retailing. Just what it can mean for construction isn’t clear yet. Parametric insurance can provide an extra level of protection for contractors and project owners. One attraction is its seeming simplicity, with a clear trigger to a comparatively quickly delivered payout and no convoluted claims process, participants say.

While a builders’ risk policy, which covers property damage during construction, can run to dozens of pages in length, parametric policies can be as short as 10. Parametric insurance is designed to eliminate the cumbersome claims process and the myriad exclusions that can lead to disputes, but it is hardly foolproof.

In one form or another, parametric insurance has been around for roughly three decades. In its early years, companies, major public owners and insurers looked to hedge their bets in the event of a disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane through a form of reinsurance called catastrophe bonds. Utilities and energy companies were also early pioneers, using derivatives to hedge against spikes in demand and prices on wholesale markets during cold snaps.

公用事业将根据所谓的“供暖学日”衍生合同收获支付，触发因素是温度下降的指定数量低于64°F的时候。

Building on that risk-hedging derivative concept, insurance carriers and brokers have developed other indexed weather insurance products that have gained broader appeal across the larger business community.

“We took that derivative concept and transformed it into an insurance product,” says Paul Ramiz, a director for innovation and solutions at broker Aon. “That is where you are seeing more appetite. It’s coming from the business community.” The ever-expanding array of new products are now reaching into new sectors, such as construction and engineering.

Where it has been used, parametric insurance can complement traditional builders’ risk policies, which may not work as well in situations such as project delays and where there is no physical damage on which to base a claim.

理论上的参数保险削减了可能是耗时且繁琐的索赔过程，其覆盖范围是由一定的商定测量或条件（例如指定风暴的指定）触发的。一旦达到了扳机，保险公司就会支付支出，无论是否实际上对项目造成了任何损害。根据ENR检查的一个样本降雨政策，支出可能需要对保险人提供给保险公司提供的数据和文件的评估。新利luck但是，在收到和评估后的30天或政策期结束后，支票应纳入邮件，样本政策指出。当然，术语会有所不同。

satellite Eyes

未解密技术革命事业explosion in both satellite-gathered weather data and computing power—has played a key role in helping parametric insurance come of age. A rapidly growing number of satellite eyes gazing down from space now allow insurers and risk managers to slice and dice data in an ever more granular fashion.

Sompo Global的总裁Martin Malinow指出，通过使用卫星图像，现在可以追踪到1979年的历史天气模式，即使在没有附近的偏远地区，也可以以3到六个小时的增量进行零。天气，保险巨头Sompo International的单位。

根据马利诺（Malinow）的说法，现在有多达10种不同的卫星天气数据库可以使用，NASA和国家海洋和大气管理局（国家天气服务部就是其中一部分）作为杰出参与者。NOAA的气候参考网络使用配备了一个称重沉淀量表的仪表站，该仪器具有三个负载电池传感器，以5分钟的间隔以毫米为单位，以三个独立的深度变化测量。然后将这些值用于算法中，以得出该站的官方5分钟和小时的降水值。现在，全世界有几个政府和国际组织，他们自己的天气跟踪机构提供了要进行处理和分析的数据。

The data explosion, in turn, has enabled risk managers, contractors and insurers to develop products and ever-more sophisticated triggers for coverage. In addition to named storms as triggers, other types include storm intensity, such as all hurricanes up to Category 3.

自该领域初期以来，一系列的天气政策已大大扩展，可弥补极高的热量，寒冷，降雨和现在的降雪量。随着数据的数量和分析能力的增长，风险经理，经纪人和保险公司已经能够在其政策触发器设计时变得更加细致。现在，它们包括一定时间段内的降雨次数，热量和湿度水平，风速，达到特定高度的波浪或如此多英寸的积雪。

“You can control materials and labor,” Malinow says. “The one thing you can’t control in construction, and that is [too often] left swinging in the wind, is the weather.”

无论是否与气候变化有关，波动的天气都是一个主要的卖点，承包商，工程公司以及其他必须努力应对由极端降雨和增压飓风造成的延误。2018年哈维飓风是一个关键的事件，该活动留下了水下休斯顿地区的大片，与建筑部门公司和项目所有者遭受破坏。

Aon's Construction Services Group的经纪分析和风险策略主管Michael Delio表示，对建筑的兴趣越来越大。

sompo’s beachhead in the U.S. market came after the insurer and Malinow landed a major parametric insurance contract in 2013 on an iron mine and port complex in northwest Australia. The mine developer was on the hook to cover any construction work stoppage because of a named storm, so the project’s lender insisted the developer insure itself against possible cyclone damage. Working with the developer and a broker, Malinow created a policy that provided coverage for the two-year construction period and another year as work wound down. There was also a trigger in case of extreme rainfall, with a separate specified payout rate for each millimeter above an agreed-upon threshold at three weather stations near the project site.

By the late 2010s, Sompo had decided to build on its experience in Australia to tap potential demand in the construction industry in the U.S.

马利诺回忆说：“在六到七年的时间里，我们一直在问自己，‘为什么没有更多的承包商这样做？’”“‘为什么他们要在资产负债表上放弃钱，而不是购买参数政策？’

管道建​​设对天气延误特别敏感，并为Sompo提供了定制美国参数天气政策的机会

去年，极端降雨引发了一系列的大延误，这是一条延伸数百英里的主要原油管道。随着工作大约三分之二的完成，截止日期和处罚迫在眉睫，承包商决定需要对天气进行一些保险保护。承包商开始与经纪人Aon和Sompo合作，但是为该项目设计了参数保险政策，而在多个州的偏远地区进行了工作，说起来容易做起来难。附近没有可以读取的气象站。

sompoturned to satellites that would monitor the pipeline route at six different points plotted on a grid. The insurer also researched historic rainfall at those points. The parametric insurance policy was to cover only the last few months of work on the pipeline. When rainfall at any of the six grid points rose above a certain number of inches, the policy would have called for a payout to cover a lost workday.

该政策的第二层涵盖了10天的极端降雨。如果降雨量超过20英寸。在该项目的六个网格点中的任何一个中，承包商将排队获得数百万美元的支出。该政策的第三层涵盖了灾难性的降雨损害，导致几天或更多的工作损失。总而言之，该政策为管道承包商提供了1000万美元的总覆盖范围。

Higher Stakes

影响近海项目的天气，例如风农结构，赌注可能会更高。18luck官网这种类型的工作涉及船舶和大量昂贵的设备，可能会根据波高或风速具有触发器。

For example, if a ship cannot leave port for several days because of choppy seas—but the policy’s trigger is 3.9 meters and the waves are 3.8 m high—the contractor could be left without coverage for a multimillion-dollar loss, notes British attorney Brook. One option is progressive payouts based on tiered triggers. This could help reduce the amount of basis risk—the difference between the actual damage suffered and the amount of the payout.

Then there is the issue of measurement accuracy and the well-known truth that weather is an extremely local phenomenon. One contractor building a 250-mile-long pipeline in Virginia had a big problem that its parametric insurance policy was supposed to solve, yet it hadn’t. A tropical deluge had dumped a massive amount on rainfall on the project, disrupting construction and causing extensive damage. The policy trigger had been set at 10 in. of rain over a rolling, 20-day period. If the rain total of any 20-day period rose above the 10-in. mark, the pipeline contractor would have stood to collect $250,000.

s使用了长期的气象站来跟踪管道长度250英里长的降雨，其中一个气象站距离将浸湿的管道距离为11.9英里。

By the contractor’s own measurement, the storm had dumped more than 10 in. of rain. But the weather station miles away from the pipeline put the amount of rainfall at 8.8 in.

Aon delio说，许多管道承包商都有自己的雨量表，并将推动“使用自己的数据集”。但是，他警告说：“您不希望有人站在那里，带着花园软管触发政策。”

但是，一旦所有方面都同意数据源，除非存在一些戏剧性的问题，否则就不应该有“摆动空间”。阿恩的拉米兹说，如果安装或监视了气象站，可能会出现问题。但是他补充说，改进的传感器和更多卫星数据将来会限制此类问题。

与传统保险一样，参数保险具有一定程度的基础风险。佐治亚大学风险管理和保险计划的教授戴维·埃克尔斯（David Eckles）说：“这是一个大问题。”“事件（触发器）是否会涵盖您的损失。…你有伤害，但你什么都没有。”

The interest in parametric weather insurance from other specialized construction sectors still seems limited, however. Few U.S. construction contractors have purchased such policies so far.

参数天气保险has a limited legal track record in U.S. construction, too. At a recent conference in a session on the subject, no one could think of a disputed claim involving parametric weather insurance.

Foundation contractors contacted by ENR directly or through informal surveys mostly stated that they either had never heard of weather insurance for their industry or that they relied on traditional builders risk policies.

James Baty, executive director of the Concrete Foundations Association and the manager for regulatory and technical affairs for the Tilt-Up Concrete Association, said it would be “hard to find weather scenarios that would impact this culture of contractors.”

承包商在另一个协会中进行了调查，以深入基础，他们知道参数天气政策。一个人说：“我们已经听到了这种类型的覆盖范围的音调”。