COPE (construction, occupancy, protection, exposure)

COPE is the set of four information families a property underwriter uses to read a building: construction, occupancy, protection, exposure. The acronym comes from the US fire market, but it now shapes statements of values, questionnaires and catastrophe model inputs everywhere. Construction says what the building is made of. The Insurance Services Office (ISO) sorts it into six classes, from wood frame (class 1) to fire resistive (class 6); cat models also want the year built, the number of stories, the roof shape and how the roof is anchored. Occupancy says what goes on inside: a tire warehouse and an office of the same floor area do not burn the same way. Protection covers firefighting means, private and public: sprinklers, detection, compartmentation, distance to the fire station and its quality, which ISO grades from 1 to 10 in its Public Protection Classification. Exposure describes threats from outside, from a hazardous neighbor to a flood zone. The four letters are read together: a combustible building that is well protected and stands alone can rate better than a poorly kept concrete one next to a chemical plant. In fire, COPE drives the rate. In natural catastrophe, it feeds the vulnerability module, and a windstorm model missing roof type or year built falls back on average curves, with wider uncertainty. Practice runs into data quality. On an international program with a thousand sites, a good share of rows read "unknown" for construction. The underwriter then picks between the broker's word, a risk survey and a premium load for not knowing.