For Insurers & claims teams

Incident data for insurers

Claims teams ask two questions constantly: did this event happen, and how unusual is it? CityAlert keeps a normalized stream of 689 official feeds — wildfire services, weather and flood agencies, disaster feeds, police open data — and archives every incident it has ever ingested. 'Was there a fire near this address on this date' and 'is this storm season anomalous for this region' become API queries against millions of rows, not a morning of calling agencies.

feeds polled
689
focus regions
757
live map
free

What you get

  • Historical incident archive

    The archive endpoint queries every incident ever returned by every feed — filterable by source, region, category, bounding box and date range. Claims verification and exposure research against years of normalized history.

  • Catastrophe situational awareness

    Wildfire perimeters and detections, flood advisories, storm warnings, earthquakes and civil-defense alerts on one live view — the CAT desk watches the same feeds the authorities publish, unified.

  • Portfolio-area webhook monitoring

    Register a bounding box around an insured portfolio and get posted when incidents cluster inside it — a threshold mode fires once when N matching incidents land in the box within an hour, built for exposure-area alerting rather than per-incident noise.

  • Trend and year-over-year endpoints

    Crime YoY, earthquakes by region and year, disaster events by type — the aggregates underwriting and pricing teams need for 'how is this area's risk profile changing' questions.

  • Per-incident provenance

    Every record carries its source feed and the upstream link — auditable back to the publishing agency, which is the difference between data you can cite internally and data you can't.

What it won't do

We'd rather lose a deal than oversell the data — these are the honest limits for insurers & claims teams.

  • Not a forensic record

    The archive reflects what feeds published and when — it can confirm that an event was reported, not prove what physically happened. Verify claim-relevant facts against official agency records before relying on them.

  • Archive depth varies by feed

    History is deepest where official incident feeds exist — Vancouver police data reaches back to 2003, other regions to when their feeds or our media logging began. Query a region's coverage before scoping a lookback study.

  • Media-sourced incidents are approximate

    Where incident-level official feeds don't exist, entries derived from media reports carry block-level locations — suitable for situational awareness, not address-level verification.

Is it a fit?

Built for you if…

  • Claims teams verifying that a reported fire, flood or storm event actually registered in public data.
  • CAT and exposure teams that need one live picture of wildfire, flood and storm events across regions.
  • Underwriters pulling neighbourhood-level incident trends into risk models.
  • SIU and research teams who want queryable incident history instead of ad-hoc agency requests.

Probably not if…

  • You need legally authoritative event records — public feeds are a pointer to the agencies that hold them, not a substitute.
  • Your exposure is concentrated in regions with no feed coverage — check the sources list first.

API plans for history and volume

Real-time reads are free. The archive endpoint and deeper history need a paid key — Developer ($99/mo) covers archive access and real-time data; Pro ($499/mo) adds webhook delivery and the MCP tools for agent-driven research. Enterprise volumes, bulk exports or custom retention — contact us.

Full plan details on the pricing page; questions and enterprise scope: [email protected].

Frequently asked questions

How far back does the data go?

It depends on the feed — the archive holds everything every feed has ever returned to us, and some official sources carry deep history (Vancouver police incidents reach back to 2003). Query /api/trends for per-region aggregates, or ask us about coverage for the specific regions you underwrite.

Can we use this in claims decisions?

Use it as corroborating context, not decisive proof. It reliably answers 'was this type of event publicly reported near here on this date' and provides the source link to verify against the authoritative record. Claims decisions should rest on the official sources the data points to.

Do you support bulk historical exports?

The archive endpoint is the supported access path — paginated queries by region, category, bbox and date range. For bulk research exports beyond API limits, contact us and we'll scope it.

CityAlert.live is an aggregation and awareness tool — media-sourced incidents are approximate and every pin names its source. For emergencies always follow official channels. See our terms and sources & licenses.