Hurricane storm surge: toward a normalized damage index for coastal regions

Hurricanes and tropical storms pose a significant threat to developed coastal regions around the world. In the United States, hurricanes cause billions of dollars in damage each year and many deaths. Climate change will continue to exacerbate damage, increasing the duration of hurricane season, creating stronger storms, and increasing coastal vulnerability to storms along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic seaboard. Most of the mortality and economic damage from hurricanes is caused specifically by storm surge flooding; the phenomenon wherein a hurricane’s heavy winds push large amounts of sea water onto land. Predicting the damage that will result from a hurricane is a challenging problem. Hurricanes are difficult to forecast, with their projected track, strength, and size constantly changing. Even when the models are accurate and forecasters are confident in a given storm’s track, predicting community impacts, including economic damage, remains difficult. The purpose of this paper is to present a geocomputational method to improve community damage estimates with a storm surge property damage index. Florida is used as a case study. The results suggest that large variations exist in community vulnerability throughout the state. The developed geocomputational framework presented in this paper is generalizable to any region vulnerable to tropical storms—helping urban planners, insurance companies, and policymakers improve efforts to reduce coastal vulnerabilities.