| In recent years, extreme wind events have caused enormous economic losses due to building damages in the Caribbean Region. This situation have prompted the Puerto Rico's Insurance Industry to sponsor the development of tools to get more detailed assessments of their portfolios of buildings, based in both constructive practices and exposure conditions present in the Island. This investigation deals with the hurricane threat for Puerto Rico and focuses on the estimation of its effect over the wind vulnerable components of industrial buildings. The methodology used follows the McDonald et al. (1981) procedure, which is based on obtaining a sequence of damage for the building components by comparing their capacities expressed in terms of wind velocities. Compilation of information, identification of local constructive practices, selection of resistance models for the wind vulnerable components, and development of an application which incorporates all tasks mentioned above, are the main contribution to the damage estimation methodology used in this work. |
