“Most people don’t appreciate that building codes are a political issue. They just assume that they’ve bought a house, therefore it must be well built or somebody wouldn’t be able sell it to them. Much like you can’t sell milk if its past the expiration date. It simply isn’t true.

The average American home unfortunately is pretty brittle, and by that I mean its not designed to be resilient. And that the building code itself is really a minimum. When people brag about their house being built to code, it’s really nothing to brag about.”

“I would say the closest analogy to what we’re doing is the insurance institute for highway safety that crash tests cars and the idea behind that is to give consumers information so that they make a choice about safer vehicles and again to reduce damage and injuries and fatalities.

We look at wind, water, fire, hail and ageing and that will give us a better opportunity as building scientists and as the insurance industry working with the construction industry and public policy makers to figure out ways to minimize damage”

“One thing that we would encourage people to do is to get to know land use policies. Get to know the risks that they face in the area in which live and see what the building codes are. If consumers demand better, stronger, safer homes they will get stronger, safer homes.”