Cost of Earthquake Being Tabulated With Federal News Feeds

Insurance companies are preparing for the economic fallout of the tsunami rippling through the Pacific by generating risk models based on ground motion data feeds from the U.S. Geological Survey.

"The second responders are actually the insurance industries" said Simon Thompson, director of commercial solutions at map software firm Esri. He already is fielding phone calls from financial sector clients asking for maps of possible damage to facilities so they can predict the cost of the magnitude 9.0 Japan earthquake that hit early Friday morning.

His team is pulling from government data feeds that track the intensity of the seismic activity to illustrate potentially hit structures along the California coast, hotels in Hawaii and ships in the Pacific. Other data sources Esri is harnessing to help the private sector are USGS shake maps, which are close-to-live maps of ground motion and shaking intensity.

"When you look at the shake maps you look at the type of impact that will have on buildings," Thompson said. For example, one company that insures a Hilton hotel in Hawaii is estimating the cost of possible damage to a private lagoon on the establishment's property.

Another commercial mapmaker, Google, is pinpointing for the general public locations, where the tsunami is headed based on estimates from the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration.

Editor's note: There have been multiple estimates of the earthquake's magnitude. The USGS estimated the earthquake's magnitude at 9.0.