Open AccessToward a more effective hurricane hazard communication
Author(s) -
Jaeyeol Song,
Atieh Alipour,
Hamed Moftakhari,
Hamid Moradkhani
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
environmental research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.37
H-Index - 124
ISSN - 1748-9326
DOI - 10.1088/1748-9326/ab875f
Subject(s) - hazard , tropical cyclone , natural hazard , environmental science , vulnerability (computing) , atlantic hurricane , threatened species , wind speed , flooding (psychology) , coastal flood , environmental resource management , meteorology , computer science , climatology , geography , climate change , computer security , oceanography , geology , ecology , psychology , sea level rise , habitat , psychotherapist , biology
Tropical cyclones are among the most devastating natural disasters that pose risk to people and assets all around the globe. The Saffir-Simpson scale is commonly used to inform threatened communities about the severity of hazard, but lacks consideration of other potential drivers of a hazardous situation (e.g. terrestrial and coastal flooding). Here, we propose an alternative approach that accounts for multiple components and their likelihood of coincidence for appropriate characterization of hurricane hazard. We assess the marginal and joint probability of wind-speed and rainfall from landfalling Atlantic tropical cyclones in the United States between 1979 ∼ 2017 to characterize the hazard associated with these events. We then integrate the vulnerability of affected communities to have a better depiction of risk that is comparable to the actual cost of these hurricanes. Our results show that the multihazard indexing approach significantly better characterizes the hurricane hazard, and is more appropriate for risk-informed decision-making.