Estimation of Hurricane Wind Speed Probabilities: Application to New York City and Other Coastal Locations
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 140, Issue 6
Abstract
A procedure is presented for estimating parametric probabilistic models of hurricane wind speeds from existing information on state-of-the-art estimates of wind speeds with various mean recurrence intervals (MRIs). Such models may be needed, for example, for the estimation of hurricane wind speeds with long MRIs required for the performance-based design of structures susceptible of experiencing nonlinear behavior. First, the procedure is applied to the case where that information is obtained from ASCE 7-10 wind maps, and examples are provided of its application to a number of coastal mileposts on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Next, the procedure is applied by using, in addition to the ASCE 7-10 information, hurricane wind speeds with 1,000,000- and 10,000,000-year MRIs estimated in a 2011 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report. It is then argued that ASCE 7-10 Standard basic wind speeds for New York City are not conservative with respect to their counterparts specified in the standard for other U.S. hurricane-prone locations. Finally, it is shown that, for the randomly selected cases examined here, best-fitting extreme value distributions of hurricane wind speeds typically have finite upper tails of the reverse Weibull type, rather than infinite upper tails of the Gumbel type. This result, if confirmed by additional studies, may help to change the still widely held belief that extreme wind speeds are modeled appropriately only by the Gumbel distribution.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors are indebted to K. Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to C. Landsea of the National Hurricane Center, for helpful discussions; to P. J. Vickery for providing estimates of hurricane wind speeds for selected U.S. locations; to N. A. Heckert of the Statistical Engineering Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, for valuable statistical advice; and to F. T. Lombardo and M. L. Levitan of the Engineering Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
References
ASCE. (2010). Minimum design loads for buildings and other structures, Reston, VA.
Castillo, E., Hadi, A. S., Balakrishnan, N., and Sarabia, J. M. (2004). Extreme value and related models with applications in engineering and science, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
Emanuel, K., Ravela, S., Vivant, E., and Risi, C. (2006). “A statistical deterministic approach to hurricane risk assessment.” Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 87(3), 299–314.
Emanuel, K., Sundararajan, R., and Williams, J. (2008). “Hurricanes and global warming: Results from downscaling IPCC AR4 simulations.” Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89(3), 347–367.
Lin, N., and Chavas, D. (2012). “On hurricane parametric wind and applications in storm surge modeling.” J. Geophys. Res., 117(D9), D09120.
Simiu, E. (2011). Design of buildings for wind: A guide for ASCE 7-10 Standard users and designers of special structures, 2nd Ed., John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
Simiu, E., Lombardo, F. T., and Yeo, D. (2012). “Discussion of ‘Ultimate wind load design gust wind speeds in the United States for use in ASCE-7 by Peter J. Vickery, Dhiraj Wadhera, Jon Galsworthy, Jon A. Peterka, Peter A. Irwin, and Lawrence A. Griffis’.” J. Struct. Eng., 660–661.
Simiu, E., and Scanlan, R. H. (1996). Wind effects on structures, 3rd Ed., John Wiley & Sons.
Vickery, P., Skerlj, P., and Twisdale, L. (2000). “Simulation of hurricane risk in the U.S. using empirical track model.” J. Struct. Eng., 1222–1237.
Vickery, P. J., Wadhera, D., Galsworthy, J., Peterka, J. A., Irwin, P. A., and Griffis, L. A. (2010). “Ultimate wind load design gust wind speeds in the United States for use in ASCE-7.” J. Struct. Eng., 613–625.
Vickery, P. J., Wadhera, D., and Twisdale, L. A. (2011). “Technical basis for regulatory guidance on design-basis hurricane wind speeds for nuclear power plants.”, United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC, 〈http://www.nrc.gov/site-help/search.cfm?q=nureg%2Fcr+7005〉.
Vickery, P. J., Wadhera, D., Twisdale, L. A., Jr., and Lavelle, F. M. (2009). “United States hurricane wind speed risk and uncertainty.” J. Struct. Eng., 301–320.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 140 • Issue 6 • June 2014
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 10, 2012
Accepted: Jun 4, 2013
Published online: Jun 6, 2013
Published in print: Jun 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Jul 25, 2014
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.