Vulnerability of mid-high rise commercial-residential buildings in the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model

In its first stage the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model (FPHLM) was developed to predict expected losses due to hurricane activity and to evaluate mitigation measures for single-family residential buildings. The FPHLM was certified by the state of Florida, and was recently extended to include commercial-residential buildings, classified as low rise (1 to 3 stories) and mid-high rise structures (4 or more stories). The challenges that these types of buildings present led the research team, composed of experts in the field of atmospheric science, civil engineering, actuarial and computer science, to create new approaches for both cases. In this paper the method to calculate the vulnerabilities of mid-high rise buildings is described and the preliminary results are introduced. Unlike single-family residential buildings, mid-high rise buildings have a high variability not reducible to a few typical cases. To deal with this problem a modular approach is proposed that estimates the vulnerabilities of individual apartment units. The modules cover most usual apartment types, and are combined to represent whole buildings. Thus, buildings with any number of stories or units per floor can be modeled by aggregating the corresponding damage per unit.