Wind Hazard Risk Assessment and Management for Structures

Rising hurricane damages over the past half century have served to motivate policy makers and insurance industry executives to demand better quantification of risk exposure to extreme winds. Advances in wind engineering and weather observation have enabled a shift away from empirically-based estimates, derived from insurance claim records, to more realistic physically-based structural damage simulations. In this dissertation, the risk and reliability of low-rise structures under extreme winds are investigated using an advanced probabilistic scheme, a windborne debris model, and a novel pressure-based structural damage model. A review of several loss estimation methodologies, their sensitivities and inter-model discrepancies is provided. Specifically, the studies examined structural damage processes in three aspects: (1) structural components, (2) low-rise structures in isolation, and (3) neighborhoods of residences. Damage to the structural components was found to increase if the pressure acting on the components was either highly correlated with wind direction or wind direction varied over a larger range over time. The cumulative effect of internal pressure on the building envelope was analyzed using three methods: American Society of Civil Engineers 7 Standard, Eurocode, and Florida Public Hurricane Loss Projection Model (FPHLPM). The percentage damage of the building envelope differed by a few percent to a few hundred percent depending on the wind speed, and structural configuration. The most striking results came from the application of a novel vulnerability model, which for the first time, parameterized the interplay between pressure damage and windborne debris. Simulations forced with probabilistic data from FPHLPM as well as wind-tunnel experiments revealed how a structure may be effected by the resistance of and the proximity to neighboring buildings. The vulnerability results were applied in a long-term risk assessment to illustrate the possible effects of a changing climate on structural life-cycle cost. Collectively, the ideas and model improvements presented in this dissertation represent a significant contribution to the development of the next generation of wind loss models.