Articles & Presentations
Insights &
Perspectives
Technical articles, conference presentations and thought leadership from the Riskscape team - covering spatial actuarial science, climate risk, geospatial technology and property data.
Articles & thought leadership
Longer-form pieces from the Riskscape team on the science behind the products - available on request.
Revolutionizing Wildfire Risk Management with NASA VIIRS and Riskscape
How density-based clustering, wind-speed optimisation, and a Wildfire Severity Model trained on ERA5 climate data and NASA VIIRS satellite detections deliver daily fire risk at 2km resolution - linked to individual properties within 2.4km of any fire block.
Insurance in the Age of Paradox
Managing an insurance company in 2026 is no longer about the actuarial calculation of risk alone - it is an exercise in navigating a hall of mirrors. AI-driven misinformation, the climate mandate, and the corporate identity crisis are three compounding paradoxes every insurer must now face head-on.
Andries Schutte - FIA FASSA CERA
On stage
Talks and papers delivered to actuarial, insurance and geospatial audiences.
Climate Change: Financial Sector Resilience Through the Geospatial Lens
Delivered at GISSA 2025. Argues that bottom-up, property-level modelling is essential - area-based averages do not suffice. Covers the full workflow from physical risk mapping through TCFD disclosure, portfolio stress testing, and a Vasicek-based systemic banking risk framework for South Africa.
Andries Schutte
IAA International Actuaries Day - Flood Modelling & Actuarial Technology
Presented on 2 September 2025. Traces the path from traditional actuarial work to founding Riskscape, then dives into the technical methodology behind surface water (pluvial) and 3D river flood modelling - with result validation via Landsat false-colour imagery overlays.
Andries Schutte - Chair, IAA Water Risk Task Force
Setting the Stage: Climate Change & Financial Risk
A conference presentation contextualising climate change for financial sector audiences. Maps the full chain from physical water hazards - flood, sea-level rise, storm surge - through to financial impacts: asset damage, stranded assets, business interruption, and systemic banking contagion.
Andries Schutte
Flood, Fire, and Geotechnical Risk - Riskscape Product Showcase
A comprehensive product demonstration covering wildfire ignition modelling (20+ years of NASA VIIRS data, 2km resolution), river flood modelling with a 1m DTM and 1-in-100-year rainfall simulation, surface water ponding, and micro-landslide slope analysis. Case studies include the KZN 2022 floods and Valencia flash flood.
Andries Schutte
Product deep-dives
Methodology and capability papers for the individual data products.
Location Intelligence - Reverse Geocoding, Map Plugins & Digital Terrain Models
Riskscape's full location intelligence stack: meter-level reverse geocoding trained on South African context (gated estates, farm cadastrals, dense urban grids), dynamic map plugins with multi-hazard overlays, and the DTM/DSM product range from 1m DSM to 2–5m bare-earth DTM. Includes crime, seismic, and flood multi-hazard capability overview.
High-Definition Addressing for South Africa - NLP, Mapcodes & Reverse Geocoding
Deep dive into Riskscape's HD Addressing system: an NLP model trained on South African language variations, fuzzy matching with transformer embeddings for misspelled addresses, the Mapcode system covering 15 million+ formal and informal structures, and the Mobile Photo API for instant property identification and KYC/FICA onboarding.
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