Hurricane Wind Loss Estimation for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands: Model Implementation and Validation

Abstract

The implementation and validation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hazus Hurricane Model for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are presented in this paper. Previous versions of the model addressed 22 hurricane-prone states in the United States but lacked the necessary data sets for use in the Caribbean territories. To remedy this limitation, several data sets were developed and incorporated into the model, including a comprehensive building inventory, estimates of the relative frequencies of various architectural and structural features of buildings that are relevant to their performance in high winds, estimates of aerodynamic surface roughness, a simplified inventory of characteristics relevant to tree blowdown and debris management, and deterministic wind field footprints. This paper presents results produced by the enhanced model that were validated and calibrated against several metrics of damage and loss reported in the literature for Hurricanes Irma and Maria, with generally good alignment. For those metrics with less robust levels of agreement, the differences appear to be largely attributable to limitations in our knowledge of the building characteristics, limitations in the model’s census tract aggregate level of analysis, or differences between the units of analysis and observation.