Methodology for Regional Multihazard Hurricane Damage and Risk Assessment
Abstract
Hurricanes are devastating natural hazards that often cause damage to the built environment as a result of their loadings, which include storm surge, waves, and wind, often in combination. Modeling these hazards individually and their effects on buildings is a complex process because each loading component within the hazard behaves differently, affecting either the building envelope, the structural system, or the interior contents. Realistic modeling of hurricane effects requires a multihazard approach that considers the combined effects of wind, surge, and waves. Previous studies focused primarily on modeling these hazards individually, with less focus on the multihazard impact on the whole building system made up of the combination of the structure and its interior contents. The analysis resolution used in previous studies did not fully enable hurricane risk assessment through a detailed investigation of the vulnerability at the component-level or subassembly-level (a group of components such as interior contents, structural components, or nonstructural components). To address these research gaps, a robust multihazard hurricane risk analysis model that uses high-resolution hazard, exposure, and vulnerability models was developed. This model uses a novel approach to combine the storm surge and wave fragility functions with a suite of existing wind fragilities to account for structural damage and then combines them with another suite of flood-based fragilities to account for interior content damage. The proposed vulnerability model was applied to the state of North Carolina as an example of a regional-scale assessment to demonstrate the ability of the method to predict damage at the building level across this large spatial domain. This model enables better understanding of the damages caused by hurricanes in coastal regions, thereby setting initial postimpact conditions for community resilience assessment and investigation of recovery policy alternatives.
Recommended Citation
O. M. Nofal et al., "Methodology for Regional Multihazard Hurricane Damage and Risk Assessment," Journal of Structural Engineering (United States), vol. 147, no. 11, article no. 4021185, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Nov 2021.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)ST.1943-541X.0003144
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
Damage Analysis; Fragility Analysis; Hurricane Vulnerability; Loss Analysis; Multihazard Hurricane
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1943-541X; 0733-9445
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Nov 2021
Comments
This research was a combination of work from two projects, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) Coastlines and People program under Grant No. 1940119, and that support is gratefully acknowledged.