Cost-Benefit Framework to Generate Wind Hazard Mitigation Recommendations for Homeowners
Publication: Journal of Architectural Engineering
Volume 23, Issue 4
Abstract
Wind hazards are responsible for the majority of hazard losses in the United States; however, little customized information is available to provide actionable information to homeowners to support individual mitigation decision making. Therefore, there is a need for decision support tools to calculate, evaluate, and present the economic benefits of mitigation over variable decision-making time horizons for unique building configurations in specific geographical locations. This paper presents a mitigation recommendation framework that is based on comparison of the economic effectiveness of multiple mitigation scenarios to identify and recommend those with the highest net benefit, NB, and net benefit to lifecycle cost ratio, NBCR. The framework is focused on supporting homeowner decision making through reliance on key inputs, such as mitigation budget and decision-making time horizon, along with specification of building attributes and location. The intended audience of this paper is researchers, design professionals, and loss modelers familiar with basic concepts of wind engineering and loss modeling who are interested in the development of tools and methods that support owner-centered adaptation approaches to resilience. To demonstrate the framework, retrofit mitigation of a wood-framed single family home is considered with a $15,000 budget and a decision-making time horizon of 30 years. The case study resulted in 10 acceptable mitigation options with construction costs ranging between $1,700 and $15,098 and NB ranging between $1,024 and $39,520.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from FEMA Grant 1603-DR-LA; Project 0039 Statewide Hazard Mitigation Community Education and Outreach Project; CFDA 97-039 through the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP); “Get a Game Plan” Program as a subrecipient through the Louisiana State University AgCenter. Additionally, the authors acknowledge the contributions of the anonymous reviewers of this paper, whose questions resulted in a significantly improved manuscript, and the contributions of Carol Massarra, who provided technical feedback on the revision of the article.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Architectural Engineering
Volume 23 • Issue 4 • December 2017
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 12, 2016
Accepted: Mar 28, 2017
Published online: Aug 7, 2017
Published in print: Dec 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Jan 7, 2018
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