Tropical cyclone damage assessment of distributed infrastructure systems under spatially correlated wind speeds

Probabilistic damage evaluation and loss estimation of spatially distributed infrastructure systems (e.g. an electric power system or a building portfolio) under a scenario tropical cyclone must consider the spatial correlation of cyclone wind speeds to estimate their impact on the built environment statistically. Previous studies have seldom considered the impact of this spatial correlation on damage assessments of distributed civil infrastructure. In this paper, a stochastic field model is developed to capture the uncertainty of cyclone wind speeds and their spatial correlation for the North Atlantic region. A series of recorded wind speed fields of historical cyclone events are examined. The bias values between the recorded wind speeds and computed wind speeds based on a widely used cyclonic wind field model are obtained. The statistics of the wind field bias are estimated using geostatistical tools. The effect of wind speed uncertainty and spatial correlation on performance assessment of distributed infrastructure systems is illustrated using an electric power system, where the metrics of performance are damage ratio, outage ratio and outage cost.