Extension of the Performance-Based Hurricane Engineering (PBHE) framework to account for climate change and structural aging effects

Abstract

The US Gulf and Atlantic coasts are frequently affected by severe tropical storms, locally known as hurricanes, which produce significant economic and life losses every year. The effects of climate change and structural aging are expected to further exacerbate the hurricane risk in this region. Wooden single-family houses are particularly vulnerable to hurricane wind and windborne debris actions. This paper extends the performance-based hurricane engineering (BPHE) framework to account for the nonstationarity of both hazard (induced by climate change) and vulnerability (induced by structural aging). In particular, existing structural aging models and a predictive model for hurricane wind speed distributions under changing climate conditions are combined to derive a multi-layer Monte Carlo simulation approach for probabilistic damage, loss, and cost-benefit analysis. The effects of different nonstationarity assumptions (i.e., climate change only, structural aging only, and climate change in conjunction with structural aging) are investigated, and their implications are discussed. The proposed methodology is demonstrated through the hurricane loss analysis of a wooden single-family house located in Pinellas Park, FL. For this application example, both climate change effects and structural aging effects are significant when considered independently. The combined effects of climate change and structural aging can increase the expected total losses during a 50-year design service life by as much as 96% when compared to the case with no climate change and no structural aging.