The problem
Pluvial flooding, when intense rain cannot drain away, is one of the fastest growing causes of loss in European cities. Paving over permeable ground means more water runs off, while rainfall is becoming more intense and less predictable. Over the past decade flood claims have tripled in Norway, even though the country is often ranked as one of the most climate resilient in the world (7Analytics).
Traditional catastrophe models were built mainly for river floods and large aggregate losses. They work at coarse resolution and assign zero risk to many buildings that do in fact flood in cloudbursts. The co-founders say risk can shift hugely between two properties on opposite sides of a street, which coarse models struggle to see. Flood losses are also badly underinsured: this century only about 15% of economic losses from floods have been insured, half the level for natural perils in general (FinTech Forum).
The product
FloodCube is 7Analytics’ family of flood software, delivered through its 7A Platform:
- FloodCube Planning: a stormwater modelling tool that shows where surface water flows today and where it will flow in future, so developers and planners can design for runoff at the start of a project. The company says it speeds up surface water analysis by 50% (Business Norway).
- FloodCube Realtime: hourly flood forecasts for the next 12 to 72 hours, linked to live weather forecasts and sensor data, used as an early warning system by asset owners.
- InzureFlood and the Pluvial Flood Index: building-level flood risk scores for insurers, reinsurers and banks, plus high-resolution hazard maps and pre- and post-event flood footprints for pluvial, river and storm surge flooding (7Analytics).
Torland told Forbes the insurance model uses more than 250 parameters and was trained on a large database of historical flood events (Forbes).
How it works
- Terrain at 1 m: the team processes detailed elevation data and updates it as new housing and roads change the landscape.
- Water flow: fluid flow methods the founders first used in oil and gas exploration simulate where rain will run and pond.
- Claims training: machine learning compares the maps with real insurance claims to learn which features make a building prone to pluvial flooding, independent of past rainfall.
- Forecasting: for early warnings, the model is fed weather forecasts from its partner StormGeo, turning rainfall forecasts into predicted water depths at each site.
- Delivery: results reach users as risk scores, maps or alerts through the platform (FinTech Forum).
Timeline
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 7Analytics founded in Bergen by four geologists and data scientists |
| 29 Sep 2022 | USD 2.5m seed round led by Momentum; StormGeo named US partner |
| 15 May 2024 | EUR 4m seed round led by Scale Capital |
| 11 Sep 2024 | Long-term flood data partnership with Fremtind |
| 7 Feb 2025 | IAG’s Firemark Ventures makes its first European startup investment |
| 13 Jan 2026 | Norges Bank uses 7Analytics data in its financial stability report |
| 15 Apr 2026 | Peer-reviewed paper on New York City flood mapping published |
Impact and numbers
- Norwegian insurance: Fremtind signed a multi-year partnership to use 7Analytics data for underwriting, pricing and advice on preventive measures. Its head of property insurance said the work makes Fremtind “market leading on physical climate risk” (7Analytics).
- Market share: the founders said in September 2025 that they work with about 30% of the Norwegian property market, have pilots with insurers in the US, Australia, the UK, the Nordics and Germany, and that hospitals, utilities, retailers and oil and gas companies in the US use the early warning system (FinTech Forum).
- Australia: IAG, the largest general insurer in Australia and New Zealand, invested through Firemark Ventures in February 2025 (7Analytics).
- Central bank: Norges Bank used 7Analytics data in its Financial Stability Report 2025 H2 to show that detached and small homes, and buildings in Northern Norway and the North-West, face higher pluvial flood exposure, and that banks differ in how much of their mortgage books are tied to high-risk properties (7Analytics).
- Research: a paper led by co-founder Werner Svellingen in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (April 2026) mapped pluvial flood susceptibility across New York City, from the whole city down to individual properties (7Analytics).
Honest caveats. The headline claims, that FloodCube can cut flood damage by up to 90% and is the most accurate runoff model in the world, are the company’s own. The Hurricane Beryl validation and other case studies are published by 7Analytics itself. Its strongest proof comes from Norway, where near universal flood insurance and a long claims history give unusually good training data; results may be weaker where claims records are thin. A 1 m resolution model is only as good as its terrain and drainage data, and underground pipes and blocked drains are hard to capture. 7Analytics is a young, venture-backed company still in its seed stage, so it carries startup risk.
What’s next
The founders say the key word for the next period is scaling: maturing pilots with insurers and growing in markets where they are already active before launching in new ones. They are also exploring how to use the early warning system for parametric insurance and claims management (FinTech Forum). The company has said it wants to use the same terrain models for other nature risks, such as landslides and biodiversity (Construct Venture).
Why it matters for Europe / green buyers
Forbes reported that UK property insurers paid a record £2.55 billion in home insurance claims in 2023 and that insurers are exiting high-risk markets or raising premiums across the board (Forbes), while Italy is working to widen natural hazard insurance cover. Building-level data helps keep insurance available by pricing risk accurately rather than withdrawing from whole neighbourhoods, and it shows homeowners and councils where cheap measures such as better drainage or raised thresholds pay off. The Norges Bank report shows that flood data now matters to financial stability, not just to insurers.
India faces a similar urban problem on a larger scale. NITI Aayog’s 2021 flood report says urban flooding from stormwater drainage congestion has become common in Indian cities, noting floods in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, and calls for city flood mitigation plans tied to land use and master planning (NITI Aayog). High-resolution runoff models of the kind 7Analytics sells could help Indian planners and insurers find the streets most at risk.
Sources & image credits
- 7Analytics, company website: https://7analytics.ai/
- Business Norway, “FloodCube Planning prevents flood damage with unparalleled results” (20 Mar 2023, updated): https://businessnorway.com/solutions/7analytics-floodcube-prevents-climate-induced-flood-damage-with-unparalleled-results
- Construct Venture, “7Analytics closes $2.5 million seed round to predict flood behavior” (29 Sep 2022): https://www.constructventure.no/news/construct-venture-invest-in-7a
- Forbes, “7Analytics raises €4m to help insurers manage flood risk” (15 May 2024): https://www.forbes.com/sites/feliciajackson/2024/05/15/7analytics-raises-4m-to-help-insurers-manage-flood-risk/
- 7Analytics, “Insurance partnership to tackle accelerating flood claims” (11 Sep 2024): https://7analytics.ai/insurance-partnership-to-tackle-accelerating-flood-claims/
- 7Analytics, “Reinsurance News: IAG Firemark Ventures invest in flood data platform 7Analytics” (7 Feb 2025): https://7analytics.ai/reinsurance-news-iag-firemark-ventures-invest-in-flood-data-platform-7analytics/
- FinTech Forum, “Q&A with Sinah Truffat and Jonas Torland of 7Analytics” (24 Sep 2025): https://www.fintechforum.de/qa-with-sinah-truffat-and-jonas-torland-of-7analytics-specialist-flood-risk-modeling/
- 7Analytics, “The Norwegian Central Bank: housing-related costs may increase as a result of more extreme weather” (13 Jan 2026): https://7analytics.ai/norwegian-central-bank-extreme-weather/
- 7Analytics, “Research article published: scalable pluvial flood risk assessment integrating machine learning and discrete global grid systems” (21 Apr 2026): https://7analytics.ai/internationaljournal-of-disaster-risk-reduction/
- NITI Aayog, flood management strategy report (2021-26) (Mar 2021): https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2021-03/Flood-Report.pdf
Images:
- “Regen & Bergen . rain & Bergen” by abbilder, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Regen_%5E_Bergen_._rain_%5E_Bergen_-_Flickr_-_abbilder.jpg
