The 130-person company includes a
dozen PhDs in fields including applied math, statistics, and
neuroscience. They’ve harnessed decades’ worth of data from the National
Weather Service and other sources to come up with a picture of
rainfall, temperature, and soil conditions in farmland across America.
The data sets are fine-tuned enough that Climate Corp. knows how the
average weather at one spot differs from another 2½ miles down the road.
It uses this information, along with historic crop yields, to predict
how next year’s haul is going to look. “We’ve got a bunch of quants
going over 30 years of daily weather data,” says Friedberg. “For each
location, we have simulated the weather for the next 730 days, 10,000
times.” The data let the company customize insurance prices according to
each farm’s risk factors and offer protection that supplements the
federal offering, covering weather events including excessive rain and
heat.
BusinessWeek
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