Accuracy of FEMA-Hazus Single-Family Residential Damage Exposure Data in Houston: Implications for Using or Correcting the Hazus General Building Stock
Publication: Natural Hazards Review
Volume 22, Issue 4
Abstract
Single-family residential building damage exposure data from the FEMA-Hazus general building stock data set (HGBS) are compared with corresponding Harris County (Houston, Texas) assessor data. Countywide, the HGBS generates similar house size estimates, but exaggerates replacement new costs by 86% and depreciated costs by 165%. At the census block level of analysis, where most FEMA-Hazus disaster mitigation modeling takes place, both size and replacement cost data had very high and irregular incidences of inaccuracy across individual blocks with no discernable error patterns. These heterogeneous errors, combined with the fact Houston-based HGBS-assessor inaccuracies are markedly dissimilar from prior observations of HGBS inaccuracy in three upper Midwest study locations, demonstrates the difficulties of using simple correction measures for HGBS data.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Published In
Natural Hazards Review
Volume 22 • Issue 4 • November 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 22, 2020
Accepted: Feb 15, 2021
Published online: Jul 13, 2021
Published in print: Nov 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Dec 13, 2021
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