The honor was handed out in early May at the publication’s fifth annual Latin America Insurance and Reinsurance Awards, which seek to highlight the best of the risk management and risk transfer solutions that the global industry is providing in the region.

“As a region, Latin America continues to draw the attention of the global (re)insurance industry and competition is increasingly intense,” said Christopher Munro, managing editor at Reactions. “The service provider sector is no different, but in the end, it was clear our judges felt that RMS was the standout performer.”

In February, regulators in the country approved RMS’ Colombian earthquake model, allowing insurance companies operating in the high-risk nation to begin using it while determining their probable maximum loss and average annual loss as well as in managing their capital reserves, according to RMS.

“The award is a testament to the market’s appetite for our risk models, analytics, and insight,” said Victor Roldán, regional head for Latin America at RMS. “Our commitment to the region has never been stronger. In the past year, we delivered a wealth of new risk modeling capability and insight to help our clients protect and expand their business, including the latest RMS Mexico earthquake model and the RMS North Atlantic hurricane models released in April.”

Roldán added that the company is also planning to release a new model for Mexico’s Pacific coast hurricane risk in 2018 and further push for wider adoption of its “Risk Modeler” solution within the region.

Photo credit: RMS

The town of Bagadó was hard hit, with some 60% of the town suffering damage and floodwaters reportedly reaching more than meter high in some sections of town. Other Chocó municipalities Cértegui, Lloró, and Nuquí also experienced significant flooding.

The National Unit for the Management of Disaster Risk (UNGRD) took action to coordinate the federal response. Personnel and machinery was deployed by the agency, particularly to help manage the overflow of the Atrato River. Many of those whose homes suffered damages are being given rent subsidies that will help provide alternative lodging for up to three months, according to the UNGRD.

Along with oversight from UNGRD head Carlos Iván Márquez Pérez, authorities in Chocó also established a local disaster risk management office, where all emergencies in the department will now be handled first hand.

The tragedy in Chocó marks another fatal disaster during the ongoing period of torrential rains that have been falling in Colombia this month. In the deadliest catastrophe to hit Colombia in decades, more than 300 were killed in the Putumayo capital of Mocoa in early April from mudslides after multiple rivers broker their banks. A rain-induced landslide also killed at least 16 people in Manizales this week.

The Atrato River and is tributaries both remained on alert for potential flooding late on Friday. Multiple other areas of the country near waterways have also received warnings in recent weeks.

Photo credit: UNGRD

At least seven others also remained missing late on Wednesday following a landslide that affected more than 500 families and 80 homes across 16 primarily lower-class neighborhoods, according to Colombia’s National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD). Rescue workers were continuing the search late into the evening in hope of finding more survivors, said officials.

The head of UNGRD, Carlos Iván Márquez Pérez, was among those who traveled to the capital of the Caldas department along with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos today to show their support for the victims and help coordinate the catastrophe response. Emergency aid was quickly dispersed to the affected families, and rent subsidies were offered to anyone who lost their homes, according to UNGRD.

Mattresses and cleaning kits were also distributed to those in need, and the national government said it has transferred funds to the mayor’s office of Manizales so that priority assistance could be given to victims immediately. The Colombian Red Cross, with more than 60 personnel on the scene, was also among the various agencies that helped to ensure the aid reached the people seeking help.

“I want to tell the people of Manizales that we are here with them,” said Santos. “We will always be here … Our hearts are with the families of the victims.”

The mayor of Manizales, per a BBC report, said that a month’s worth of rain fell overnight, causing the earth to collapse and destroy dozens of homes in quick succession in the Andean city whose metro area is home to more than half a million people.

Heavy rains have continued to bear down on many areas throughout the country for weeks, leading to red alerts being issued by public officials to warn those who may be in harm’s way. The risk of mudslides and flooding remains high in various locations given the high volume of water traveling throughout the country’s rivers.

After multiple rivers breached their banks in the Amazonian department of Putumayo on April 1, the resulting “avalanche” of water killed more than 300 people in Mocoa. It was the deadliest natural disaster to hit Colombia in decades.

Photo credit: Presidencia de la República

The aircraft, a Boeing 727-200 operated by Líneas Aéreas Suramericanas (LAS), was accelerating as normal on the ground when the pilot decided not to complete takeoff and then overshot the end of the runway by nearly 600 feet due to its speed.

There were no injuries to any of the four crew on board and no significant damage reported to the plane, which was scheduled to fly to Pasto, the capital of Nariño. But El Dorado International Airport’s 13R runway remained closed for roughly two hours following the incident and led to delays for other aircraft.

At least one Avianca flight bound for Bogotá from Medellín’s José María Córdova International Airport, which was also dealing with thunderstorms and heavy rain, was canceled and at least three others were delayed for several hours.

The runway in Bogotá reopened around 3 pm, although only 3,100 meters of the 3,500-meter runway were available, according to Aerocivil, the aviation regulator in Colombia. The agency said that it was conducting an investigation to determine why the incident occurred.

The planned flight to Pasto was carrying food intended to help those impacted by the disaster in the Putumayo capital of Mocoa, where more than 300 people were killed by flash flooding and mudslides in early April. The flight had been coordinated by Líneas Aéreas Suramericanas and the Red Cross.

Authorities said that storms last night may have dumped some five inches of rain that caused multiple rivers — the Mocoa, Mulato, and Sanguyaco — to swell, with some breaking their banks to trigger mudslides and an “avalanche” of water that demolished full neighborhoods and affected many other sections of the municipality of Mocoa.

The death toll has been rising throughout the day, with some officials fearing it may still grow further as the search for survivors continues. Some 200 people remained missing early in the evening of April 1, according to the Colombian military. At least 400 others have been injured.

The primary local hospital, according to a BBC report, is struggling to manage the situation. At least 21 survivors in critical condition were airlifted to Neiva, the capital of the department Huila located about 320 kilometers to the northeast by ground. Parts of Putumayo have lost electricity, and Mocoa was left without water service, according to the office of the president.

“There were 17 affected neighborhoods,” Mocoa Mayor José Castro told Colombian magazine La Semana. “Some disappeared completely, like San Miguel, part of Laureles, San Fernando, and Progreso, where I live. The house was completely devastated.”

Military forces in Colombia help one resident of Mocoa evacuate as floodwaters inundate this community in Putumayo. (Credit: Fuerzas Militares de Colombia)

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has issued a state of emergency and said that about 10 days worth of rain fell last night to “produce the avalanche” of water that overran the riverbanks. The president arrived in Mocoa today to “guarantee attention to the victims of this tragedy,” he said.

Santos also said this morning that Colombia’s National Unit for the Management of Disaster Risk (UNGRD) is overseeing disaster response in Mocoa. As part of the country’s official National Risk Management System response, the Colombian military is on the ground and members of the armed forces have been seen carrying vulnerable citizens away from danger while working to preserve life and aid the injured. The emergency unit of the National Police and a specialized aerial unit of the army have also been sent to the scene of the tragedy.

The Colombian Red Cross this morning mobilized a force of at least 22 people to join public officials on the ground in Mocoa. The United Nations has offered “to provide all the support that the Colombian authorities deem necessary.” Colombia’s UNGRD, which is led by Carlos Iván Márquez, immediately began gathering supplies to send humanitarian aid to those affected by the catastrophe, and the National Police made at least 14 flights into the area with supplies.

By early afternoon, according to the UNGRD, more than 900 personnel from various agencies were working on search and rescue, caring for the wounded, verifying the location of survivors, delivering emergency aid, and other necessary tasks. That number rose to more than 1,100 later in the day, and the president said that at least four helicopters and five planes have also been present to assist officials. Some 50 tanker trucks were brought in by early afternoon as well to help in the ongoing effort to provide potable water to the community.

“My heart — our heart, the heart of all Colombians — is with the victims of this tragedy,” said Santos while addressing the media in Mocoa. He added that, “We continue with the search and rescue of people — we are with the victims, with the families affected.”

Humanitarian aid is being coordinated for the victims of the tragedy in Mocoa. (Credit: UNGRD)

The president also told the press that the government is working on plans to manage the ongoing fallout of a catastrophe that will require a long recovery.

“We are going to make a plan of action with Dr. Carlos Iván Márquez, with the government, and all the institutions that are here,” added the president. “We are going to start the whole process of humanitarian aid, we are of course going to take care of the wounded, we will start the funeral process for the deceased, and we will also begin to re-establish the services that were disrupted.”

In the afternoon, UNGRD began accepting monetary donations from those who want to help the victims. Those wishing to contribute can send funds directly to the agency’s Banco Davivienda savings account (cuenta de ahorros) #021666888.

#TodosConMocoa Con tus aportes entregaremos Asistencia Humanitaria de Emergencia a los damnificados de Mocoa. pic.twitter.com/tZglCQ7T4H

— UNGRD🇨🇴 (@UNGRD) April 1, 2017

Many of Colombia’s other top public officials have also traveled to Mocoa to assist with the tragedy, including: Luis Carlos Villegas, minister of defense; Alejandro Gaviria Uribe, minister of health and social protection; Luis Gilberto Murillo, minister of environment and sustainable development; General Juan Pablo Rodríguez, top commander of the military; and Jorge Hernando Nieto, director of the National Police.

This article has been updated throughout the day as more information has surfaced.

Photo Credit: Presidencia de la República

The approval was a necessary step forward because insurance companies operating in the high-risk nation can only use approved models when determining their probable maximum loss and average annual loss as well as in managing their capital reserves, according to RMS. “Colombia has one of the highest seismic hazards in South America, with significant exposure concentrations on active faults,” said Victor Roldán, regional head for Latin America at RMS.

Roldán added that few companies have earthquake insurance even though they are threatened by a high exposure. This risk is further magnified by the fact that Colombia’s three major cities — Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali — each sit on a different one of the three ranges of the Andes Mountains present in the country. The threat is even greater for the many large companies that have a presence in all three metropolises. “Despite the country’s steadily increasing economic growth, insurance penetration is still low,” said Roldán.

He believes that RMS adding greater scientific understanding will help insurers and reinsurers better price their coverage and assess their exposure. And increased knowledge by those underwriting the policies will bring a greater resilience to disaster for the country as a whole, while the carriers can be more secure in their portfolios and capital reserves.

RMS collaborated with various South American seismology and engineering experts, including the Bogotá-based Universidad de Los Andes, to craft its Colombian model. With such localized knowledge, the firm was able to add greater nuance about real-world conditions to its model.

“Based on a single region-wide catalog of crustal and subduction zone seismic sources and including more than 134,000 stochastic events across South America, the models also capture the influence of local soil conditions on earthquake shaking and incorporate local design and construction practices into assessments of building vulnerability,” said the company in a statement.

Its Colombian earthquake model is one of eight that RMS has crafted for South America. It also has models for Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

Rob Newbold, executive vice president at AIR Worldwide, is encouraged by the approval and sees this as another positive step toward improving resiliency and disaster risk management in the region. He noted that Colombia is now the second country in South America, after Peru did so in December 2015, to approve the firm’s models.

“To continue to protect the strong growth of South America’s insurance markets, regulators are largely moving to establish model-based capital requirements more reflective of the actual risk faced by the region,” said Newbold.

AIR recently updated its Colombia model to improve the accuracy of loss predictions due to ground shaking, tsunami, and liquefaction, says the company. New damage assessments, incorporating the latest scientific data, are also now available for high-value industrial facilities, builder’s risk, and public infrastructure. In addition, the upgrades also offer the ability to model a current-day assessment of historical events, including the 1999 earthquake that devastated the city of Armenia in central Colombia.

Especially with the recent improvements, AIR Worldwide believes the model will help the Colombian insurance industry meet solvency requirements recently enacted by the government. “The AIR model can now be used in Colombia to better manage risk and satisfy regulatory requirements that base capital reserves on probabilistic loss estimates,” said Newbold. He added that he thinks the model can give “companies a distinct advantage in preparing for the next earthquake in the region.”

Unified Messaging Systems (UMS) is one company that is bringing new technology to the task. The Oslo, Norway-based firm helps first responders and auhtorities communicate better with one another and the general public during an emergency.

Photo: Anand Anupam of Unified Messaging Systems gives a presentation on his companies services during Andicom 2016 in Cartagena. (Credit: Loren Moss)

To better understand how the systems work and are being used in Colombia, Loren Moss, executive editor of Finance Colombia, recently sat down with Leon Hausman and Anand Anupam of UMS. They discussed their operations, their experience at Andicom 2016, and their outlook on the Colombian market.

Finance Colombia: What is Unified Messaging Systems and what leads you to come to conferences in Colombia?

Leon Hausman: UMS is a Norwegian company founded in 1997. From our beginnings we have been dedicated to the development and implementation of critical messaging solutions and national alert systems. Nowadays we are leaders in the world market in this kind of industry.

At Andicom, we had the honor of presenting the different technologies that are available nowadays on the market for attention to disasters. We discussed how these technologies are integrated into the different channels of communication and existing infrastructure in the country to communicate notifications of emergency alert messages to certain segments of the population. They also go out to groups of authorities so as to be able to attend to a disaster and minimize any kind of risk and safeguard the greatest number of lives in the face of any eventuality.

Finance Colombia: Fascinating. And how does the communication work?

Leon Hausman: Generally, the area of attention to disasters has been handled by radios, handsets, LBS, and the authorities. In many countries, this all works with handsets, walkie-talkies, and radios.

Finance Colombia: What challenges do you face in the fascinating digital world where the radios handle data? They are connected to internet instead of an antenna?

Anand Anupam: Right, so the radio technology that you are talking about is essentially used for first responder communication. For example, within the police force, among themselves. So there are two kinds of technologies that you’re talking about. One is public warning, which is to people, to citizens. Everyone doesn’t have a radio phone, right?

The other is the communication between first responders. And what is happening across the world now is you have the same systems communicating to radio channels and to the walkie-talkies. You have tetra radios now, so you have the same system communicating to tetra radios as well as to the public communications channels on phones and whatnot.

In fact, today in some of the European countries we work with technologies that allow you to have conference calling between a person with a radio on the ground, with a person who has a cellphone on the ground, and with the emergency operations center that is on a fixed-line phone. So you see more and more technologies converging these days, especially on the kind of use cases that we talked about.

Finance Colombia: Why Colombia? You guys obviously are global. What did you see in the Colombian market that made you decide to establish here? Are your operations here specific to Colombia, the Andean region, South America, and the Americas?

Anand Anupam: We’ve been working in the Latin American market for the last five years, across countries from Mexico and all the way to Argentina. The reason why we have a focus on Colombia is primarily because of the kind of engagements that we are having here, mostly with MinTIC — the ministry of communication — as well as the civil defense organizations.

We’ve been in discussions with them over the last couple of years around multiple technologies, our experiences, and use cases. And looking at the kinds of disasters in Colombia, I think systems like ours make a lot of sense.

Finance Colombia: In what kind of applications have you seen success? For example, In India we have seen there has been recent flooding. Here in Colombia, of course, we have floods and we have earthquakes. We don’t have tornadoes or hurricanes, but what use cases have you seen specifically where your system has been employed and you’ve been able to find success?

Anand Anupam: We have worked with systems and incidents from those as localized as something seen in a campus or an event in a particular community to events that have an impact on the beaches.

Earlier in the presentation we were talking about multi-hazard systems that are able to handle communication and incidents at the local level as well as the national level. So our systems work, for example, on tsunamis, earthquakes, flooding, cyclones, as well as man-made disasters like bomb-blasts, terror attacks, large-scale demonstrations, or public accidents. So use cases include systems capable of handling all of these various catastrophes and disasters.

Naturally, given the strength of a storm that last weekend caused mass disruptions — and may have swung the peace vote — in Avianca’s home country, more flight complicationz are likely in the days to come. So it is best to avoid unnecessary trips to the southern East Coast of the United States until the weather blows over.

“Avianca will exempt payment of date change fees for people with booked flights on October 7, 8, and 9 for changes of up to one month after the starting date of your booked trip,” said Avianca in a statement. “This change can be made in accordance with the availability of spots in the flight itinerary.”

In addition to all scheduled flights between Colombia and Florida, others were canceled with legs in Peru, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras.

While Southern Florida is now largely out of the massive hurricane’s path, concerned residents on the Eastern seaboard as far north as the Carolinas have been boarding up their windows and heading inland to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

Though some coastal residents historically have taken pride in staying home and riding out storms, that mentality is now less prominent than it was in the past.

Emergency management officials are glad to see it go. They have spent decades urging people to be cautious and not put themselves in harm’s way before a hurricane. In addition to the potential for personal danger — or death — rescue missions to try to save the stranded or injured occupy precious disaster-response resources that should be devoted to dealing with the truly unavoidable damage from the catastrophe.

People are increasingly getting the message. Hurricane Katrina in 2006 changed everything when it destroyed half of New Orleans, and Superstorm Sandy showed that the worst Mother Nature has to offer knows no northern bounds when it ravaged New Jersey, the New York metro area, and beyond. Add in the record-setting gauntlet of four hurricanes that made landfall in Florida in 2004 — plus Rita, Wilma, and Ike in the years to come — and very few people still consider it brave to stay home and court disaster. More and more, it just looks stupid.

So it is no surprise, and with great sense, that Avianca is employing the precautionary principle. A few people will be upset that their travel planes were inconvenienced. But nobody will die.