Estimation of Economic Impacts of Climate-Driven Hazards Using Stochastic Process Model
Publication: ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering
Volume 10, Issue 1
Abstract
Projections using global climate models indicate that climate change will influence the patterns of natural hazards, such as thunderstorms, atmospheric river landfalls, extreme droughts, and ocean waves. The frequency and intensity of these hazards are expected to increase gradually in proportion to global temperature. The design principles based on the philosophy of cost optimization need to be updated to accommodate the nonstationarity of the load processes, primarily because the prevalent cost analysis methods in the literature predominantly assume that the loads are stationary. This study provides a novel methodology for calculating the first two moments and the distribution of the economic losses for nonstationary loading processes. Here, the load processes are modeled as a nonhomogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) with time-dependent rates. The presented methodology is applied to estimate the losses due to tornadoes in Ontario, Canada and heat waves in US cities. It was found that if adaptive measures are applied to increase the capacity of structures, the losses due to these climate-driven hazards can be significantly reduced. For example, if mitigation strategies are employed in Ontario, such that the effect of tornadoes with wind speeds lower than becomes negligible, then the tornado losses until 2100 can be reduced by 66%.
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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.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
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ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering
Volume 10 • Issue 1 • March 2024
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© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 26, 2023
Accepted: Oct 10, 2023
Published online: Dec 13, 2023
Published in print: Mar 1, 2024
Discussion open until: May 13, 2024
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