Fantasy Football for the Win: it can save your home from climate-driven damage

I keep hearing that Americans don’t like math. Yet, as the NFL season is about to begin, it occurs to me there is a place where millions of Americans delight in playing with numbers, models, projections, and managing unforeseen risk – that’s fantasy football.

And that got me to thinking how we can use those same skills to stack our teams each week to also help reduce the risk of weather-related disasters.

To manage a fantasy football team, you need to conduct research, analyze past player-performance, understand the strengths and weaknesses of each player, and make decisions that could make or break your entire season.

It’s literally all about the numbers.

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Controlling the Odds

Odds and chance are often arbitrary calculations, such as your chance of getting struck by lightning in your lifetime. This is considered a highly random act over which you have very little control. However, when you consider the odds of catching a foul ball, different actions you take can have a very specific impact on your overall likelihood. Your chances depend on how often you go to baseball games, your seat selection, the playing style of the teams you watch, how many other people seated near you also want to catch the ball, how many times you get up to grab a snack, and so on. In this case, the calculation is affected greatly by your behavior.

As we deal with weather-related disasters at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety - IBHS , it’s not as binary as your home will either get struck or it won’t. When a tornado strikes, the path of the most severe damage is usually actually extremely narrow, yet we see wind- and debris-related damage to roofs, garage doors, windows, and siding spread for miles all around the area where the highest winds occurred.

So, it is our ability to take actions – informed by science – that steers us toward better decisions to protect our homes from the type of devastation that comes from severe weather. Yes, it’s also all about the numbers.

Start ‘em or sit ‘em?

Home hardening has evolved in recent years so that we can now help people really make a difference. From hurricanes and derechos to high wind and hail, choosing the right type of protections for your home will have a huge impact on its performance in the next storm. Each project is an investment of your time and money, so how do you know which updates protect you the most? Just as you research players as you build a fantasy team, you’ll need to:

• research your home’s vulnerability to specific weather events,
• learn about any gaps in your local building codes,
• find a trusted contractor to discuss your options,
• and investigate whether you can find help paying for specific types of projects in your area or insurance discounts for resilient construction.

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Leaving it All on the Field

It’s difficult to predict who will be the next Deebo Samuel, who became a fantasy football cheat code in last season’s week 10 when he evolved his catching game into a running game for the San Francisco 49ers. Can we identify some stand-out performances using post-game analysis? Absolutely. Post-disaster studies show that typical construction often leaves gable-ends, chimneys and attached structures insufficiently anchored. As a result, storms can leave large openings in your house or even cause a portion of your home to collapse. Asking for stronger construction methods will help keep your whole team intact, even during some of the most severe weather that comes your way.

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Running a Zone Defense

Some players in your home’s defense are good at zone and man-to-man protection. Research has proven that by creating specific defensible zones around your home, you can improve your chances of keeping wildfire outside of the red zone. The first five feet immediately around your home, called the home ignition zone, are the most critical part of your defensible space. This area should be hardscaped and kept clear of all combustible items such as plants, mulch, and wooden or vinyl fences.

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Real-Time Adjustments

Things happen during the season and in the middle of a game. Players get injured, or the weather shifts. We can prepare for some impacts months in advance by saving for larger projects and scheduling the work well in advance of the next season. But other moves need to happen more quickly, as the forecast is updated, and severe weather is headed your way. Fantasy football managers sign up for score alerts, player updates, injury and Covid lists. You can also prepare by ensuring you have at least three different ways to receive storm alerts to stay informed and fully up to date.

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Never too early to think about the next draft

The annual draft gives fantasy football managers a chance to add critical skill sets to their teams. This is a time when an appreciation for the constant evolution of the game becomes very important. Just because something has worked for a long time, doesn’t mean its performance won’t change in the future. The same can be said in disaster science.?New research comes out, building materials change, construction methods are improved. At IBHS, we are always ready to update our guidance as building science evolves. We also do our part to stay ahead of the curve on new developments. For example, some of the research we are currently working on includes:

• An updated performance review for different types of roof shingles
• A deeper understanding of new types of siding and how they perform against specific weather perils
• A continuation of our world-class hail research ?
• Continued research into the impacts of structure separation and fuel breaks against wildfires to support our Wildfire Prepared Home standard

Increasingly, homeowners are not powerless as we work to protect our homes from severe weather. We know that the type of roof shingles we select will perform differently against hail and wind, we know that some garage doors will stand up stronger to severe storms, and that specific construction methods will get us a touchdown nearly every time Mother Nature tries to break through our defenses.

Math, science, and good statistics have helped us find engineering solutions we know will drive a better outcome. Now it’s time to move it from the practice field – or test lab if you will – and put it out on the field. ?