When I founded SITE Technologies, I had a single use case in mind: to help property owners and managers assess the exterior elements of their property for the planning of repairs and budgets.
But as my team and our clients introduced our tools into the real world, we uncovered a wide array of use cases that I didn’t originally envision.
By Austin Rabine, CEO, SITE Technologies
One of those applications is disaster preparation and recovery. As a Florida resident, I’m all too aware of the impact that extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, pose for our communities. Beyond their human impact, the destruction hurricanes leave in their wake can devastate local economies and cause billions in physical damage.
For commercial real estate (CRE) professionals, anticipating and preparing for a weather event should be considered a key priority, especially in areas prone to hurricanes. This ensures buildings, landscaping, facades, and roads remain safe and secure, and any financial impact is minimised.
But what constitutes proper preparation? Well, it’s more than just stacking sandbags and battening down the hatches – or at least it should be.
Proper preparation should include safety preparations for both the building and the occupants. The wider effects a serious storm can have on your portfolio are the things involving your insurance claims or future coverage premiums.
Pre-storm event inspections are one way of ensuring both, as can discover everything from a HVAC unit not properly bolted to a roof, to existing wear and tear that could be passed off as storm damage by an adjuster looking to minimise their liability.
Being able to provide evidence for all assets and identify any existing issues makes post-storm inspections swifter and safer, too. It can expedite a claim’s process, which for a business needing to carry out costly repairs, time is of the essence.
Technology’s increasingly important role
Technology, including AI-powered solutions, are playing a growing and significant role in hurricane preparations.
Remote-controlled devices, such as drones, can carry out inspections of a building’s exterior that detail everything from a serious crack in a pavement surface, to a single HVAC tie-down missing, or a seam in the roof, well before a storm hits.
At SITE Technologies, we’ve released a new white paper – Braving the Storm – that details these new AI tools, and how CRE owners can utilise them to their advantage in the face of a storm.
The rising magnitude of risk
The data is sobering. Nine of the most costly natural disasters in US history have been caused by hurricanes; a single event can cause billions in damage to property and businesses. Hurricane Helene for example, which hit in 2024, was responsible for $78.7bn of destruction. And while the frequency of hurricanes remains relatively steady, their magnitude is surging.
In our report, Dr. Manoochehr Shirzaei, a leading expert in hurricanes and named wind storms, points to a disquieting trend: storms are becoming more intense in wind speed, precipitation, and geographic scope.
We saw this with Hurricane Helene, which carved a path of destruction from Florida to Virginia, racking up at least $12bn in property damage. For property owners, this translates to a massive drain on resources.
A recent survey conducted by Censuswide for SITE Technologies revealed that nearly half of property managers spend at least $7,500 annually per property just on hurricane preparation, with many devoting up to 100 hours of labour to the process.
Bridging the insurance gap
The most acute pain point, however, is the insurance market. In storm-prone regions like Florida and the Gulf Coast, premiums have spiked by as much as 50%, and for some, coverage is becoming virtually unobtainable.
As Danielle Lombardo, Vice Chair at Howden US, aptly notes, insurance carriers often operate in a vacuum of information.
When an owner cannot provide granular data on secondary characteristics – such as the specific age of a roof membrane or the exact condition of HVAC tie-downs – the carrier’s risk model defaults to the worst-case scenario. On a $50m asset, that lack of data can quadruple a premium from $1m to $4m.
This is where technology has become critical for bridging this gap and removing any doubt during a payout negotiation. This approach is fairer for the asset operator and more conclusive for the carrier.
The AI advantage: from drones to data optimisation
The traditional method of manual inspection – sending a person up a ladder with a camera to walk a roof – can be dangerous, slow and subjective, especially when spread across a massive portfolio of real estate. After a storm, manual inspections are inherently precarious, and at times, simply not possible.
AI-driven platforms are changing the narrative by utilising drones to capture high-resolution, geo-referenced imagery of every exterior facet of a property – roofs, facades and pavement.
At SITE, our AI counts inventory across 15 key exterior elements, including ADA parking, light poles, bollards and signage. Meanwhile, expert-backed roof assessments are performed by our team, to build condition reports, pre- and post-storm.
By ‘flying’ a property just before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, owners create a pristine digital baseline. This allows for:
- Predictive Maintenance: AI can detect minor roof damage or structural vulnerabilities that the human eye might miss, allowing for repairs before a storm turns a small crack into a total failure.
- Rapid Post-Storm Assessment: When a building is unsafe to walk after a storm, drones can access the area immediately. Using “slider” features, managers can compare pre- and post-storm imagery side-by-side to identify exactly what damage occurred.
- Expedited Claims: Presenting an insurance adjuster with undeniable photographic evidence – ‘here is the roof on May 30, and here it is on September 1’ – removes the friction from the claims and reimbursement process.
Setting a new benchmark for operations
As detailed in our white paper, Ben Bischmann, Senior VP of National Operations for Bridge Industrial, views this technology as a hallmark of a ‘good operator’.
The industry agrees. Our research shows that 86% of property professionals believe a mapped digital record of their property would add significant value to their hurricane response.
We cannot control the weather, and we cannot stop a Category 5 hurricane from making landfall. But by leveraging AI and drone technology, we can eliminate some of the uncertainty that follows the storm.
In the new reality of the Atlantic hurricane season, digital evidence is the ultimate Hedge – and protection – against volatility both before and after a storm.
