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Frequently Asked Questions

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General
  1. What is CCRIF?
  2. Why was CCRIF established?
  3. What is the main purpose of CCRIF?
  4. What products does CCRIF offer?
  5. Will CCRIF have a new product involving excess rainfall coverage in the near future?
  6. Will CCRIF consider developing a product for the agriculture sector or utility companies?
  7. Why was CCRIF designed as a parametric facility?
  8. How does CCRIF work?
  9. Who are the members of CCRIF?
  10. Who can become a member of CCRIF?
  11. What factors determine if there is a payout or not?
  12. What is CCRIF’s hazard and loss modelling framework?
  13. Why does CCRIF use National Hurricane Center data to determine loss for hurricanes
  14. What is the Real Time Hazard and Impact Forecasting System (RTFS) and how can it be used by member countries?
  15. How are CCRIF policies renewed?
  16. How are premiums determined?
  17. Has CCRIF made payouts to date?
  18. How is the financial stability of CCRIF sustained?
  19. How does CCRIF use donations and premiums paid to the Facility?
  20. Why was there a payout for Dominica and St. Lucia after the November 2007 earthquake ...
  21. Why was there no payout after Hurricane Dean (2007) from CCRIF?
  22. How does CCRIF fit in with a country’s hazard risk management framework?
  23. How is CCRIF supporting or contributing to the discussions related to climate change?
  24. Are there any capacity building or other collaborative relationships that CCRIF is engaged in with Caribbean...
  25. Why does CCRIF not offer products to companies or private individuals?
  26. Should governments consider other financing mechanisms as part of their disaster management framework or is CCRIF enough?
  27. Wouldn’t Caribbean governments better serve their constituents...
  28. How can additional information on CCRIF be accessed?
  29. Are there any publications that could enhance understanding of CCRIF?
  30. Triggering Event
  31. Non - Triggering Event
CCRIF Insurance Policies and Payouts
  1. Countries can purchase coverage up to US$100 million per peril. Is there a limit on the number of perils covered per year?
  2. What is the relationship between CCRIF and other insurance providers in the region –in terms of influencing company policies provided at the national level?
  3. In light of the fact that CCRIF is a non-profit organisation, what would happen if CCRIF is unable to make payments based on claims made which are more than the amount of funds available if there were events in a number of countries?
  4. What hazards are included in the hurricane payout calculation?
  5. Does CCRIF make payouts for accumulated rainfall?
  6. Governments and CCRIF should consider that rainfall tends to cause more infrastructural damage than wind.
  7. Are you hoping to look at the effects of rainfall in the CCRIF products? Here in Antigua even though we did not get the full effects of Omar, rainfall damage was great.
  8. What factors led to a payout of ~US$8.5M dollars to Barbados as compared to US$3.2M for Saint Lucia after Hurricane Tomas?
  9. What is the catastrophic trigger which generates a payout for a hurricane or earthquake?
  10. What is the strength of winds that cause a policy to trigger e.g. cat 1 etc?
  11. In reference to Belize with Hurricane Richard of last year, was it due to the policy that they bought, that they did not get a payout from CCRIF?
  12. Will the CCRIF team be willing to meet with country stakeholder groups to discuss the CCRIF policies in more depth?
CCRIF Second-Generation Model
  1. With respect to the storms of last year and in particular Tomas, how did the model outputs compare to what occurred in reality?
  2. Are losses calculated primarily focused on the built environment? What is the level of significance given to the losses in the natural physical environment?
  3. Is tourism included, since tourism is the main industry of many islands which is heavily dependent on environment?
  4. Are the risks tailored for countries based on individual country hazard assessments?
  5. Where are the base numbers for population from and what is the accuracy of the system for trials?
  6. In terms of impact by the wind, what consideration is given to structure? Are the buildings wooden or concrete?
  7. Regarding the system of estimating structural damage based on the work done in the Cayman Islands, there is a concern that the Cayman Islands may not be representative of what obtains in the Eastern Caribbean.
  8. If there are more accurate data available for a particular country, could this be incorporated into the model?
  9. Given that it is the duty of NMO to forecast localised conditions, has the linear regression equation for storm surge by Conner et al been tested by CIMH or NHC?
General Hurricane Forecasting
  1. Do the disaster managers design their action plan from the NHC forecasts and graphics or from the local adaptation of the forecast?
  2. Is there really such a term as "a good (hurricane) forecaster"?
  3. It has been suggested that it is a good idea to plan for a hurricane of a category one more than is forecast, does this mean that we could do our own analysis as forecasters, of tropical depressions and determine if there will be tropical storm effects in
RTFS Operation
  1. Is any special software required to access the CCRIF data/RTFS?
  2. Since the password that was given to us will expire by the time the next hurricane season comes, how do users get a new password or do they have to apply for it?
  3. Is there a list of the meanings of key terms, TAOS, RMSs, MM5 etc?
  4. There is a problem with the RTFS data for a particular area. The top half of the fields are being cut off.
  5. Will events be available to practice with, in particular the zooming effect for specific areas?
  6. What organisations determine the 5 locations for which countries can choose to have RTFS focused information?
  7. The impact forecast seems to be focused on the forecast track without consideration of the “cone of uncertainty”. Is that also taken into consideration?
  8. Is it possible to have a best- vs worst-case scenario built into the forecast?
  9. Are the RTFS slides from the course available for download?
  10. Can RTFS provide information on “operational impacts on airports”?
  11. Can you explain the fact that when the event comes closer to land the forecast error is smaller?
  12. Where on the CIMH website can we view these interpretations of Tropical Cyclone forecasts and related observations?
  13. Does the probability cone as given by NHC consider feeder band effects or only the centre of the system? In the past, even though storms and hurricanes have not affected Trinidad directly we have suffered from feeder band effects especially in terms of ro
  14. Can users run historical storm tracks?
RTFS Outputs
  1. What is the difference between CCRIF RTFS and other websites such as Ralph Tropical Weather Outlook and stormpulse.com?
  2. Given that the model outputs are every 3 and/or 6 hours, what kind of lead time is required for the new product – in terms of location specific outputs for a particular island?
  3. At what point when the weather system is out in the Atlantic, is the model first run? Will the model use information for tropical depressions or just tropical storms and hurricanes?
  4. Does the RTFS address strong tropical waves which give lots of trouble e.g. the one in Oct 26, 1996 that caused lost lives in Saint Lucia and extensive damages?
  5. How different are the CCRIF RTFS products compared to the NHC products?
  6. Why was Barbados rainfall not captured in your analysis, given that we recorded over 300mm in the passage of Tomas?
Briefings and Use of RTFS Outputs
  1. Are we allowed to use the information in our media briefs and quote the source of the information?
  2. It would be good for NMHS to be briefed on this information as well.
  3. What is the timeframe in which this briefing is provided?
  4. In case of Tomas last year, the first bulletin from NHC came out at 2100UTC; at what time was the first briefing given to CDEMA? I am trying to ascertain if it can be given to an NMHS in real time.
  5. Also what is the mode of dissemination?
  6. Do you provide briefing on the intensification shown in the MM5/WRF models that CIMH is running?


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