WASHINGTON, DC — August 12, 2021 — Athenium Analytics, a leading provider of natural-hazard risk analysis, has completed assessments for the U.S. Air Force of structural conditions and natural-hazard exposures at more than 80,000 buildings on U.S. military installations around the world.
These integrated reporting capabilities, available exclusively to the U.S. Air Force through August 2021, will become commercially available to key vertical industries in the private sector in September 2021. Learn about the new property risk analytics bundle here.
Athenium Analytics deployed its proprietary computer-vision tools to extract data from imagery to help Air Force civil engineers improve how they inspect and maintain structural assets and have greater insight into damage and replacement costs assessments. These assets ranged from warehouses and multi-family dwellings to office buildings and transportation centers.
“Athenium Analytics has been a great partner and helped advance innovation projects alongside the Air Force Installation & Mission Support Center (AFIMSC) and the Air Force Civil Engineering Center (AFCEC),” stated AFIMSC. Athenium Analytics’ work with AFIMSC was highlighted at two sessions focused on roof inspections and Artificial Intelligence during the Air Force Innovation Summit in San Antonio earlier this month.
Athenium Analytics also applied patented geospatial risk-scoring to assess exposure from ten different hazards at each site analyzed across the contiguous United States. Assessments included likelihood and severity of severe hail, straight-line winds, tornadoes, hurricane surge, river flooding, wildfires and ice storms.
The algorithmic risk-scoring also reported each individual building’s damageability and expected replacement costs from natural hazard events. “We took into account structural information, building materials and replacement costs, plus each structure’s condition as assessed by imagery analysis,” said Dr. Ellen Cousins, Chief Science & Technology Officer for Athenium Analytics.
“Our deep-machine learning and AI, in just a few moments, can sift through billions of records related to severe weather events that occurred at every building site across the contiguous United States over the past five decades,” Dr. Cousins added.
Athenium Analytics received and analyzed Air Force imagery captured by fixed-wing aircraft, drones and satellites. “The remaining aerial imagery used for the innovation initiative was sourced by Athenium Analytics and used to derive structural characteristics and assessments,” said Jordan Foley, president of Athenium Analytics.
He added that reporting methodologies for analyzing building damageability which were developed for the Air Force also will be available for delivery to the commercial sector beginning in September 2021.
“We can work with a diverse set of vertical sectors that need more insights as to building conditions and property values, and the potential for exposure to costly damages in the future,” Foley said. ”These decision makers include commercial and residential real estate investors, mortgage originators and investors, and institutional investors concentrated in residential portfolios.”
In delivering the building-risk assessments to the Air Force, Athenium Analytics collaborated with AFWERX, a program office at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, as part of Small Business Innovation Research, a federal program that encourages development of new products with potential for commercialization.
Athenium Analytics is a portfolio company of In-Q-Tel, the non-profit strategic investment fund serving the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the broader U.S. Intelligence Community.