Earthquake Insurance in California, USA: What Does Community-Generated Big Data Reveal to Us?

Abstract

California has a high seismic hazard, as many historical and recent earthquakes remind us. To deal with potential future damaging earthquakes, a voluntary insurance system for residential properties is in force in the state. However, the insurance penetration rate is quite low. Bearing this in mind, the aim of this article is to ascertain whether Big Data can provide policymakers and stakeholders with useful information in view of future action plans on earthquake coverage. Therefore, we extracted and analyzed the online search interest in earthquake insurance over time (2004–2021) through Google Trends (GT), a website that explores the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. We found that (1) the triggering of online searches stems primarily from the occurrence of earthquakes in California and neighboring areas as well as oversea regions, thus suggesting that the interest of users was guided by both direct and vicarious earthquake experiences. However, other natural hazards also come to people’s notice; (2) the length of the higher level of online attention spans from one day to one week, depending on the magnitude of the earthquakes, the place where they occur, the temporal proximity of other natural hazards, and so on; (3) users interested in earthquake insurance are also attentive to knowing the features of the policies, among which are first the price of coverage, and then their worth and practical benefits; (4) online interest in the time span analyzed fits fairly well with the real insurance policy underwritings recorded over the years. Based on the research outcomes, we can propose the establishment of an observatory to monitor the online behavior that is suitable for supporting well-timed and geographically targeted information and communication action plans.

Factors Affecting Flood Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation in Flood-Prone Areas in the Philippines: An Integration of Protection Motivation Theory and Theory of Planned Behavior

“…Moreover, social media was also used as a tool for communication during flood disasters [21]. In accordance, the study of Gizzi and Potenza [74] showed that in the days immediately following the occurrence of natural hazards such as earthquakes or floods, people rapidly increase online activity in seeking information on preparedness actions. Thus, monitoring online behavior with Big Data can be useful for putting into the field well-timed and geographically targeted information and communication action plans by stakeholders.…”

Population Interest in Information on Obesity, Nutrition, and Occupational Health and Its Relationship with the Prevalence of Obesity: An Infodemiological Study

“…Search engine trends serve as a tool that can identify, both through real-time surveillance and temporal analysis (periods), the needs and interests of the population in relation to health information (and information related to other fields) [12,28]. In this regard, it is important to note that this study encompasses an analysis of ecological data and, therefore, the findings may not be representative at the individual level, both owing to the study design and the tool's limitations [64].…”

“…GT has been used to explore a wide range of topics in the health field [12] and has proven to be particularly useful in the early detection of health events such as diabetes [16] or obesity [17,18]. In addition, GT has also been shown to be very useful when it comes to studying population behaviors, and there are studies in the field of diet [19], occupational health [20,21], bariatric surgery [22], home care [23], gout [24], sexually transmitted diseases [7,25,26], as well as public health monitoring of disease outbreaks [27], among other research fields [28]. A review by Mavragani et al [12] showed that these studies generally focus on examining seasonality, correlations, estimation models, and, to a lesser extent, provide predictions and forecasts.…”