This article covers the ways Exposure Management teams typically use GEO, both during live events and as part of ongoing portfolio and model work.

This article assumes your organisation is already sharing portfolio data with MIS and that Damage Factors are configured, either your own or the MIS baseline. If either of those isn't set up yet, start with [Sharing Your Data with MIS] before working through the steps below.

Every figure referenced here, exposure, location counts, layer coverage, is only as current as the last time your portfolio was shared with MIS. Check the As At Date shown on the Insights tab before relying on a number for a live decision.

This document sits a level above the feature articles it links to. For field-by-field detail on how a table or layer works, see the linked article rather than expecting it to be repeated here.

If you host data with MIS on a monthly or quarterly cycle, you may want to run an event's layers against an exact As At Date in your own modelling or GIS platform rather than relying on GEO's live Insights.

[SCREENSHOT: Layer Downloads panel showing shapefile and GeoJSON export options for the Exposure and Claims layers]

See [Downloading Layers] and [Reducing Layer File Size with Mapshaper].

Treaty exposure is harder to host on GEO wholesale than a direct portfolio, since cedant-level detail isn't always practical to share in full. There are three common approaches, and they can be combined:

Contact [email protected] to scope which of these fits your treaty data and set up the pipeline.

You can upload a CSV of locations or a shapefile directly onto an event report without sharing a full database with MIS, useful for reviewing a specific set of claims, a new account's schedule of values, or comparing an active event's footprint against a similar historic one.

[SCREENSHOT: Overlay your data dialog, showing a custom CSV file with locations added to the map]

See [Uploading Your Own Data].

With an archive of historic events going back to 2017, you can run any of your model outputs or validation portfolios against past MIS layers and compare the results to your model's AAL figures. Year Long Reports (for example, the annual US Wildfires report) are particularly useful here, since they let you validate against a full season rather than a single event.

If you have a specific validation portfolio, MIS can host it on GEO the same way as a regular portfolio so you can run Insights against it.

See [Year Long Reports] and [Historic Events Archive].

During hurricanes, MIS publishes Wind and Flood as separate layers with separate Assessments, since they're typically covered under different policy terms and peril codes. Wind Assessments reflect physical damage, Flood Assessments reflect the depth of flooding relative to ground elevation, so the two scales aren't directly comparable to each other. See [Assessment Scales] for how each is defined.

On Insights, use the peril drop-down to switch between Wind and Flood. Each has its own Damage Factor set, so make sure you're applying the factor set that matches the peril you're currently reviewing rather than carrying one across to the other.

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[SCREENSHOT: Insights peril drop-down showing Wind and Flood as separate options]

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[SCREENSHOT: Insights peril drop-down showing Wind and Flood on the Location Insights Page]

For hurricanes and other extended events, the Power Outage layer shows the percentage of customers without power by county, updated daily for longer-running events. This gives you a way to attribute a Probable Maximum Loss to BI values specifically, distinct from Building and Contents.

A common approach: use Wind Damage Assessments for Building values, Flood Damage Assessments for Contents values, and Power Outage for BI values, since each of these perils tends to drive the corresponding value type most directly.

[SCREENSHOT: Power Outage layer showing percentage of customers without power by county across an affected region]

Some events produce distinct secondary loss drivers that are worth analysing separately from the primary peril, for example tornadoes spun off during a hurricane, fire following an earthquake, or inland versus coastal flooding within the same storm. Where MIS identifies these, they're published as their own layers (such as Tornado Tracks within a hurricane event) so you can isolate that portion of the loss rather than treating the whole footprint as one peril.

[SCREENSHOT: Tornado Tracks layer shown branching off from the main Hurricane wind footprint for Hurricane Milton]

Take a fictional treaty account on the Demo portfolio, ahead of a hurricane forecast to make landfall in Florida.

Which treaty method should we use if we don't have a clear view of our cedant data?
Start with the aggregated or reduced view. It needs the least detail from you and still gives a usable read on where your cedants sit within a footprint.

Is the Power Outage layer available for every event?
It's most commonly published for hurricanes aand other extended events where power infrastructure is a material loss driver in the US. Check the Layers panel on the specific event.

Why are Wind and Flood exposure figures so different for the same event?
They're calculated from separate Assessments on separate scales, so a location can show high Wind and low Flood impact, or the reverse. Review them independently rather than combining the two Damage Factor sets.