When insurance companies started insuring buildings, they would put a pin on a map to show the location of the insured site.

This would make sure that the company did not insure two buildings next door to each other against fire - because if one burned down they both would.

But this simple visual technique for establishing risk vanished over the years as the products and lines offered by insurers increased and tracking what had been insured became more complicated.

No one batted an eye at the ever increasing complexity - after all models were created to work out how hurricanes and other such natural catastrophes could affect the insurer.

And then came September 11 and the face of insurance changed for ever. After the impact of horror of what had happened came the realisation that nothing like this had ever been planned for before.

Insurers started to realise just how much risk there could be in one building - not only the property that was insured, but also people's lives, workers compensation... and just about every line of business written in this day and age.

And the threat of further attacks had insurers taking a new look at their portfolios to work out just how much exposure they had in other high-density areas should a similar event take place.

But the filter systems were imperfect, data compiled in ways that could not effectively be sifted and sorted into geographic locations to produce a complete and accurate picture.

And it was in this environment that Hemant Shah, the founder and chief executive officer of Risk Management Solutions, hit on the idea of producing a computer programme that could sift and sort through the data - to finally produce figures that could provide a true risk assessment of a geographic location.

And yesterday this new computer system designed to help insurers work out the total amount of exposure to either man made or natural catastrophes in built-up areas was launched in Hamilton.

The state-of-the-art programme has been designed by teams of industry experts at a cost of billions of dollars.

“It is a little subtle to an audience that does not know what we do,” said Mr. Shah. “But after September 11 there were several key affected areas. One was that companies had accumulated risk across several lines of business and did not anticipate such a disaster.

“For example, property and workers compensation, group life and accident could all be affected in a single catastrophe. They were managed previously independently from each other - and how do you work out the impact on all lines of business?

“Secondly, up until September 11, the primary focus for catastrophe was to focus on natural disasters - and in doing so focused on principal geographic locations in which this would happen, such as along coast lines or faults. There was not a focus on city centres.”

Mr. Shah, who flew in this week to launch the product in Bermuda, said that a lot of insurance companies had not looked at what had been placed in cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia.

And his company started to work on a system that would capture that information for their clients.

First they commissioned aeroplanes to fly over city centres to provide an aerial map, and then went vertically up each building, charting each company and employee in the edifice.

Mr. Shah said that this meticulous work can now help insurance companies work out just how much risk they have in a building or a zip code, called “four wall exposure”.

“We do business with all leading insurers and reinsurers, which of course includes Bermuda” said Mr. Shah. “After Hurricane Andrew (South Florida in 1992) we established a lot of relationships on the Island.”

And he said he chose Bermuda as the logical place to launch not only because of this, but also because the Bermuda market was more open to new ideas.

“There is a tremendous accumulation of data at insurance companies,” said Mr. Shah. And he said his system helps the insurance company work out risks.

It even has a “spider” element, that will trawl through company policies to find any exposure hot spots not previously recognised.

In this very ambitious project, RMS partnered with leading commercial underwriters, data developers, and research organisations to create this solution and program.

It can simulate terrorist attacks on cities to estimate not only the damage, but the insured loss by using a company's existing RMS catastrophe risk platform to define and implement capacity management plans.

Mr. Shah said his company intends to expand this database to include other cities in the US - and eventually around the world.