GIS software Terraloupe enables accurate assessment of disaster damage with what3words

German GIS startup TerraLoupe provides aerial imagery analysis and data extraction services for assessing damage to buildings and properties. After examining the data, TerraLoupe’s clients often send inspectors to physically assess the damage. Giving them a street address doesn’t work because it refers to a large area, making it difficult for the inspector to actually find the affected areas. After natural disasters such as Hurricane Harvey, street signs and address infrastructure are often destroyed meaning the inspector often can’t find the right location using a street address anyway. GPS coordinates offer precision, but are difficult to communicate and use.

3 word addresses are providing TerraLoupe with a simple and human-friendly way to reference a specific location or damaged area. Insurers on the ground can enter a 3 word address into the free what3words app to find the precise 3m x 3m square analysed by TerraLoupe. The what3words grid also provides a neat and easy way to divide areas into squares of 3m x 3m, so the damage within each square can be isolated and zoomed in on for more detailed analysis, and easily compared against past imagery for detecting fraudulent claims.

TerraLoupe’s 3 word address workflow for building insurance

TerraLoupe machine vision technology identifies buildings from aerial imagery

A bounding box segments each building and colour coordinates them according to levels of damage detected

The what3words grid is used to divide the buildings into 3m x 3m squares

TerraLoupe technology identifies which squares contain damage and highlights them

3 word addresses are collected for the affected squares
Those 3 word addresses are then communicated to Terraloupe’s clients.