California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and Cal Poly Humboldt plan to form a strategy group to undertake what Lara says will be the nation’s first public wildfire catastrophe model.

The plan is for the group to draw from California’s research and higher education communities to make recommendations for a publicly accessible data source to predict future wildfire losses.

A public wildfire catastrophe model would predict future losses and serve as a benchmark for insurance rates, provide accessible data for wildfire safety efforts, and create educational and career opportunities for California students, according to the California Department of Insurance.

Cal Poly Humboldt will chair the group and invite researchers and higher education leaders from across the California State University, the University of California and other areas. Cal Poly Humboldt is home to one of the state’s three accredited forestry programs.

The strategy group will create recommendations for a public wildfire catastrophe model in alignment with a new regulation on catastrophe modeling and ratemaking that the Department of Insurance is finalizing by December 2024. The plan calls for the group to present its recommendations to Lara by April 2025 to identify next steps for technical needs, public benefits, and potential funding sources.

This strategy group’s mission is enabled by a new regulation Lara is finalizing that will allow insurance companies to use modeling in the setting of insurance rates. The regulation specifies that models must calculate wildfire safety benefits, such as forest-management actions by state and local fire agencies and work by public and private utilities to reduce ignition sources.