作為英語學習中語料輸入的重要環節，閱讀是我們提升綜合英語水平的一大備考關鍵，托福閱讀作為托福考試中相對容易出分的單項，是我們必須完美hold住的備考重點。而充分利用各類資料進行拓展閱讀訓練，不僅能夠提升我們對英語書面材料的感覺，也可以為我們的托福寫作提供亮眼表達和句式積累。下面我們來看一篇托福雙語閱讀素材：實時可獲大數據改變保險業。

Real-time insurance Pay per-risk

The availability of huge volumes of data in real time is changing insurance

實時保險 按次計價

實時可獲的大量數據正在改變保險業

EVEN at weddings or whale watches, the buzz of a drone is no longer a surprise. Drone photography is booming. Gartner, a consultancy, says some 174,000 drones will be sold for commercial use around the world this year, and 2.8m to consumers. It is easy to imagine a few might fall out of the sky, causing damage the pilot cannot hope to pay for: crushed wedding cakes, injured spectators and so on. Amid scores of near-misses, several incidents have already occurred. In 2014, for example, a drone filming a triathlon in Australia crashed on a competitor’s head. 即便是在婚禮現場或是觀看鯨魚時，無人機的嗡嗡聲也已不是什么新鮮事。無人機攝影正在蓬勃發展。咨詢公司高德納(Gartner)稱，今年全球將售出約17.4萬架商用無人機和280萬架消費級無人機。不難想象，其中一些可能會從空中墜落，造成操控員不得不賠償的損失，例如壓碎的婚禮蛋糕、受傷的觀眾等等。很多時候險情僥幸得以避免，但也有幾次事故真的發生了。2014年，澳大利亞的一架無人機在拍攝鐵人三項賽時砸中了一位參賽者的頭。

Clearly, drone-users need insurance. Typically, risks are insured through the payment of an annual premium. Insure4drones, a British specialist, charges ￡738.86 ($1,000) to cover a DJI Phantom, a bestselling drone, for a year. From October Flock, a London startup, will offer insurance on a flight-by-flight basis, at the push of a button in an app, to any commercial drone-operator in Britain. Cover for amateur pilots will soon follow. Costs will be about ￡5 per hour of flight, according to Allianz, an underwriter. 顯然，無人機用戶需要保險。他們一般通過支付保險年費來覆蓋風險。英國專業保險公司Insure4drones為最暢銷的無人機大疆精靈(Phantom)開出的保費是每年738.86英鎊(1000美元)。從10月起，倫敦創業公司Flock將向全英國的商用無人機運營商提供按次計費的保險，只需在一款應用上點擊按鈕即可。針對非專業無人機操控員的保險業務也將很快跟上。安聯保險公司稱，每飛行一小時的保費約為5英鎊。

Flock’s app relies on a wide range of data. Weather forecasts come from IBM, a computing giant which, having spent over $2bn on The Weather Company in 2015, now offers forecasts to within a few hundred metres, and over a period of minutes. Live information about nearby aircraft is provided by a software company called Snowflake, which tracks aeroplanes around the planet. Flock also considers local topography, such as proximity to churches, hospitals and schools, as well as roads and traffic levels. It also monitors the drone itself, gathering data as it flies to build a risk profile for that machine. All these numbers are crunched when a customer requests insurance through the app. As well as offering a quote, the app tells pilots how to reduce their risks. Flock的應用倚賴各種各樣的數據。首先是來自計算巨頭IBM的天氣預報。IBM在2015年斥資逾20億美元收購了天氣公司(The Weather Company)，現在能提供精確到幾百米范圍、幾分鐘內的天氣預報。一家名為雪花(Snowflake)的軟件公司提供了關于附近飛行器的實時信息。該公司追蹤全球范圍內的飛機。Flock還會考慮當地的地形地貌，比如到教堂、醫院和學校的距離，以及道路和交通狀況。它也會監控無人機本身，收集其飛行數據，為其建立風險檔案。當用戶通過應用要求投保時，應用會分析所有這些數據。除了給出報價，應用還會告訴操控員如何降低風險。

Allianz then converts Flock’s data-driven risk scores into a price. The attraction for Allianz is acquiring customers cheaply. “Rather than humans sitting and writing business, the algorithm does it on the spot,” says Tom Chamberlain, who manages its aviation underwriting. 然后，安聯會把Flock根據數據得出的風險評分轉換成一個價格。對安聯來說，這種方式的吸引力在于獲得客戶的成本很低。該公司負責航空保險的湯姆·張伯倫(Tom Chamberlain)說：“算法隨時隨地就能搞定，不需要人們坐下來寫保單。”

Conventional insurance works by pooling individual risks and then setting a price for that group—new drivers under 30, say. But that process can be much refined if the objects and people being insured can report to the insurer automatically, and if there is a wealth of data on the external environment. As an ever-growing number of sensors—in phones or watches, drones or cars—gather ever-greater volumes of data, more and more activities can be assessed for real-time risk (though in the absence of pooling, some risks may become prohibitively expensive to insure). 傳統保險的運營方式是將個體的風險匯聚起來，然后為這個群體設定一個統一的價格，比如30歲以下的新手司機。但是，如果投保的人或物能夠自動向保險公司報告，保險公司也擁有大量有關外部環境的數據，那么這個過程就可以大大改進。隨著手機、手表、無人機、汽車等設備里安裝的傳感器越來越多，收集的數據也不斷增加，越來越多的活動能夠實現實時的風險評估(盡管在缺乏風險匯聚和分擔的情況下，要為某些風險尋求保險可能會變得過于昂貴而無法實現)。

Flock is not alone. Verifly, a New York startup, competes with it in America. Root, a car insurer, offers drivers insurance based on their minute-to-minute behaviour behind the wheel. It even offers a discount to Tesla drivers if their car spends plenty of time in autonomous mode. Slice, a San Francisco startup, lets its customers insure their houses and cars for the time they are used on services such as Uber and Airbnb. Trov, also from San Francisco, insures personal possessions for short periods. Flock并非一枝獨秀。紐約創業公司Verifly是它在美國的競爭對手。汽車保險公司Root根據司機每一分鐘的駕駛表現向他們提供保險。如果特斯拉車主花大量時間使用自動駕駛模式，Root甚至會給他們打折。當人們把自己的房屋和汽車用于優步和愛彼迎這類服務平臺時，可以通過舊金山的創業公司Slice投保。另一家同樣位于舊金山的公司Trov為個人財產提供短期保險。

Flock’s chief executive, Ed Klinger, says that he eventually wants to insure all kinds of future autonomous activities, from taxi rides to rolling delivery pods. He argues that selling insurance through annual premiums is inflexible. It less easily takes advantage of the large volume of live data that can now help estimate the risk posed by a given activity at a given time. For instance, a passenger in an autonomous taxi may be at far lower risk if the trip takes place outside rush hour, or in weather conditions in which the car performs at its best. Firms that dispatch delivery drones might use Flock to calculate the risk for each flight automatically, depending on cargo and address. Flock的首席執行官埃德·科林格(Ed Klinger)說，最終，他想要承保未來各種各樣無人參與的活動，從無人駕駛出租車到帶滾輪的送貨機器人。他認為收年費賣保險不夠靈活。這樣不太容易利用大量的實時數據，而這些數據如今可幫助評估特定時間內由特定活動帶來的風險。例如，如果在非高峰時段出行，或者出行時的天氣狀況最適合汽車行駛，那么乘坐自動駕駛出租車的乘客面臨的風險要低得多。使用無人機送貨的公司可能會用Flock來自動計算每次飛行的風險，這取決于貨物和投遞地址。

The business model is in its infancy, but on-demand insurance seems bound to grow. In a world where consumers expect push-button convenience from their services, they will demand the same of the insurance those services rely on. 這樣的商業模式還處于起步階段，但按需保險看來勢必會增長。在如今的世界，消費者期望點擊按鈕就能方便地使用服務，他們也會對這些服務所依賴的保險提出同樣的要求。

以上就是關于

Real-time insurance Pay per-risk he availability of huge volumes of data in real time is changing insurance的托福雙語閱讀素材分享，如果童鞋們正被托福閱讀提分困擾，不知該從何選擇合適的拓展閱讀練習材料，希望這篇分享能夠對你的托福備考提分之路有所幫助。