Integrated Structural and Socioeconomic Hurricane Resilience Assessment of Residential Buildings in Coastal Communities

Abstract

With growing shoreline populations and projections of damage and losses from coastal natural hazards, such as hurricanes and nor’easters, coastal community resilience has attracted increasing attention. To ensure coastal communities return to their normal operating conditions with original functionality, many aspects, such as social impacts, economic costs, and the physical integrity and safety of building infrastructures, require consideration to better predict future damage and vulnerability, leading to improved decision-making to mitigate future threats. In this study, an interdisciplinary framework linking social, economic, and infrastructural community resilience is proposed to project structural damage, morbidities, home displacements, and economic losses. Through Monte Carlo simulation of historical weather and vulnerability data, potential physical damage scenarios are predicted. A case study of residential building hurricane vulnerability of a coastal community is presented, and the effects of elevating buildings are evaluated. The physical damage projections indicate that the elevation of houses closest to shore, which have a higher vulnerability to hurricane storm surge damage and consequent socioeconomic impacts, shows the potential to drastically reduce cumulative hurricane-induced damage, potentially leading to substantial reductions in cumulative socioeconomic hurricane-induced losses.