SkyServe partners with NAVANC for assessment of property geospatial risk in India
API-driven model for calculating GeoRisk score
Given that India's home loan market is expected to double in the next 5 years, the significance of identifying property risk at scale becomes high. Encroachment of water drains or lake beds, flood risk and water availability among others are important signals of risky properties for early detection by loan crediting agencies. To discourage property development in such locations, early detection is required such that the borrowers/creditors/insurers are informed about the risk associated with such investments. On one end, the borrowers are at risk of action from creditors for default due to property damage from preventable causes like flooding. On the other end, they are at the risk of municipal authorities razing down the properties if they are built illegally or getting trapped for bribes by people hiding or distorting facts. On top of that, the highest amount of loan defaults are also seen in semi-urban and rural borrowers making the issue sensitive.
In order to provide a response to this need, an application programming interface (API)-driven solution for quantifying geospatial risk named GeoRisk is presented for looking at properties spanning a large area of interest. Apart from the risk factors like water availability mentioned before, our algorithms are also detecting property accessibility, road width, administrative level, seismic zone, cyclone hazard, proximity to Archaeological Survey of India monuments, and green zone status of any property in the area of interest. The algorithms are demonstrated to work with known public/open datasets and sample solutions are provided for verification. We are using open-source tools such as Shapely and Django that help us write the required geospatial algorithms which helps us identify and operate between a lot of layers of data. These algorithms take care of doing the spatial operations of overlapping, distance matrix, and all other requirements. A sample API response for a randomly chosen property point is shown below:
Considering the momentum of growth of geospatial technologies in recent times, more data is being made available by the Indian government, organizations and individuals from this sector. As a pre-requisite, we have also worked on generating the required data using the raw datasets from the above-mentioned sources. These datasets are generated by using algorithms and geo-processing tools such as interpolation, change-detection, raster-vector conversions, spatial cropping, land use classification, and precise geospatial intersections. All of which was achieved by using open-source tools. For example, the difference in lake bed water body over a period of two decades can be used to identify areas where encroachment can be checked. Satellite imagery datasets separate from the above-mentioned are also available to be used for further insights being available. The datasets cover Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat. The rest of India is planned to be integrated into the GeoRisk API very soon. An interactive interface to test and visualize the solution is also provided for checking the validity of responses over areas of interest. The user interface can be accessed through any browser. The entire functionality is available under the GeoRisk API.
NAVANC’s Nagachethan S M said about the partnership “At Navanc, we are creating India's first comprehensive credit score mechanism to the assets possessed by an Individual and help him/her leverage the same financially. NAVANC uses GeoRisk API as a crucial integration for an asset’s geographic risk along with legal and crime reporting.“
If you find this useful, why not request a demo? Reach out to us at: [email protected]