Assessment of storm surge damage to coastal settlements in Southeast Florida

Elisabetta Genovese and Colin Green

Journal of Risk Research, 2015, vol. 18, issue 4, 407-427

Abstract: Coastal cities are growing at a very rapid pace, in terms of both population and physical assets, and great uncertainty surrounds the future evolution of hurricane intensity and sea-level rise. The combination of these trends will contribute to large financial losses due to property damage in the absence of specific protections. Southeast Florida represents a clear hot spot of coastal flood exposure: more than 5million inhabitants live in the counties of Miami Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, and the population is still growing. It is also a low-lying area where tropical hurricanes hit frequently. This article illustrates a methodology to assess coastal flood damage in urban settlements and it aims to determine more general lessons useful for all coastal cities. We consider the impact of different storm surges predicted by the SLOSH model and investigate flood risk considering different types of hurricanes. For each event, we apply a specific damage function and determine whether the considered storm surges potentially lead to an asset loss, considering both properties and their contents. The results show that, in the absence of protections, losses will be very high for large storm surges, reaching up to tens of billions of US dollars. In the second part of the analysis, we demonstrate how economic impact changes when protections are built up, considering different heights of protections. These results could be used as inputs into a robust decision-making process to determine the future of coastal protection in southern Florida.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2014.896400 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:18:y:2015:i:4:p:407-427

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2014.896400

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().