Assessment of hurricane-induced internal damage to low-rise buildings in the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model

Interior damage is a significant portion of overall building damage caused by hurricanes. Most of the vulnerability models in the literature assess interior damage by expert opinion or with empirical functions of the envelope damage. Interior damage to buildings at low to moderate wind speeds is mainly caused by the ingress of water through breaches in the building's envelope. The parameters that govern water intrusion include wind speed, rain rate, rain duration, raindrop size distributions, exterior building damage, and shape of the building. The amount of ingressed water is proportional to the breach sizes as well as the uncertain meteorological phenomena. This paper presents a novel approach to estimate the interior building damage caused by hurricanes by simulating the co-occurrence of wind, rain and envelope damage and by converting ingressed water into interior damage. The simulation rationale is described and some preliminary qualitative results are introduced via a sample case. The approach presented herein has been implemented in the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model (FPHLM). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.