Comparing the Performance of Residential Roofing Systems during Hurricane Harvey

Hurricane Harvey devastated the Gulf Coast of Texas when it made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in August of 2017. Several research teams, including one supported by the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association, performed structural assessments to evaluate the damage caused by the storm event. One of the many observations by the research team was the disproportionate damage to residential roofs, depending on the roof covering type (i.e. asphalt shingles, tiles, or metal). The team evaluated and categorized damage by roofing material to better understand the performance of each system. For residential structures, the percent of each roof type within a damage category was determined. The damage categories were determined by the structural assessments where each structure was categorized by the percent damage for each element (i.e. roof cover, roof sheathing, etc.). The results show that metal roof systems perform the best, followed by asphalt shingles, with tile systems performing the worst.