Prediction for national catastrophe fund

United States of America (US) Congress is considering a bill ‘H.R. 2555: Homeowners’ Defense Act of 2010’ to form National Catastrophe Risk Consortium, one of whose functions is to fund a National Catastrophe Fund to help public and insurance companies meet the liability claims from hurricane, fire, and blizzard. However, before the act is enacted into law by US Congress, the bill has to pass through House Financial Services Committee which takes into account the projected costs, disbursements, and the amount required to be appropriated for the task and its source. Using data for three catastrophes for the last 100 years, the 2011 claims for hurricane, fire, and blizzard in United States of America are estimated. For predicting acres burned and economic damage due to blizzards, a trend analysis and linear regression were carried out using Excel and GraphPad Prism. Poisson distribution was used to model hurricanes. The estimates for the different catastrophes are based on a 95% confidence interval. The cost to the National Catastrophe Fund for the liabilities of fire, blizzard, and hurricane comes to over 2 billion. Of this, the bulk cost arises from fire damage, followed by hurricane damage and blizzard damage. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012