Date of Award

12-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical and Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Jean-Paul Pinelli

Second Advisor

Nakin Suksawang

Third Advisor

Ersoy Subasi

Fourth Advisor

Ashok Pandit

Abstract

The Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model (FPHLM) predicts insurance losses due to hurricane events. This thesis describes maintenance tasks of the vulnerability component of the FPHLM. First, it explores the applicability of recent experimental research to the FPHLM opening protection, water intrusion, and roof pressure modeling features of the Personal Residential (PR) and Commercial Residential Low-Rise (CR-LR.) models. These changes were not implemented because either more experimental data is needed or they had no impact on the losses. Next, it discusses an additional update to the CR-LR model that changed the soffit area calculations, sampling bounds within the rain model, and water infiltration calculations, which collectively resulted in an increase in the model vulnerability outputs. Finally, it concludes with a revamping of the cost analysis of the CR-LR model that accounts for the variation of repair and new construction costs through the incorporation of probabilistic component cost sampling. The results show an insignificant effect on the overall uncertainty of the model output. The appendices then provide a user manual for the FPHLM vulnerability MATLAB routines, as well as a guide to proper use of the current versioning software utilized by the team, Tortoise SVN.

Download

Share

COinS