Jean-Paul Pinelli

• Florida Institute of Technology

Introduction: Due to hurricane damage, building residents or businesses must be relocated during the recovery time, which leads to time-related expenses (TRE), also known as additional living expenses (ALE) or extra expense coverage (EEC) or business interruption insurance (BIC). TRE are difficult to predict since they depend on the damage and time...

In the last decades, the concern about losses of containment of storage materials caused by extreme natural events has largely increased. Furthermore, the release of hazardous materials could lead to fires, explosions, or the emission of toxic clouds into the atmosphere with dramatic consequences for people and the environment. The present chapter...

The concepts notes were developed to facilitate discussion among various stakeholders gathered from around the world to share information on their ongoing research activities and current research projects, find collaborative activity partners, showcase research achievements, and challenge further improvements to disaster risk reduction and resilien...

The Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model is a probabilistic risk model designed to estimate wind induced insurance losses to residential infrastructure in Florida. In the physical damage estimation module, Monte Carlo simulation is employed to generate damage matrices as a function of wind speed by comparing probabilistic building component capaciti...

Despite the enormous economic, sociological, and environmental benefits of trees, their failure, when exposed to extreme wind events, can cause life-threatening injuries, damage to buildings and power distribution lines, and significant economic disruption. In the state of Florida, where buildings are exposed to the highest wind speed in the nation...

The DesignSafe cyberinfrastructure (www.designsafe-ci.org) is part of the NSF-funded Natural Hazard Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) and provides cloud-based tools to manage, analyze, understand, and publish critical data for research to understand the impacts of natural hazards. The DesignSafe Data Depot provides private and public disk...

Hurricanes are a main cause of economic losses in the world, including Florida. They affect exterior, interior, and the contents of residential buildings. The interior damage can be as much as half of the cost of total damage, but the estimation of the interior damage is still somewhat crude. Most damage models estimate interior damage as a percent...

DesignSafe addresses the challenges of supporting integrative data-driven research in natural hazards engineering. It is an end-to-end data management, communications, and analysis platform where users collect, generate, analyze, curate, and publish large data sets from a variety of sources, including experiments, simulations, field research, and p...

Catastrophe models estimate risk at the intersection of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. Each of these areas requires diverse sources of data, which are very often incomplete, inconsistent, or missing altogether. The poor quality of the data is a source of epistemic uncertainty, which affects the vulnerability models as well as the output of th...

This paper presents a methodology to develop hurricane induced coastal flood vulnerability functions for residential construction based on empirical tsunami fragility functions. A force equivalency mapping procedure first transforms the tsunami fragility functions into coastal flood fragility functions. Following the quantification of the damage st...

Posthurricane surveys have shown that building interior damage often results from water intrusion into the building interior. The interior damage can make up 50%–100% of the total building loss; therefore, its accurate evaluation and quantification are necessary for estimation of hurricane losses. In this research, water propagation into a building...

Wind Driven Rain (WDR) intrusion through existing defects and wind-induced breaches is one of the major causes of building interior damages during hurricane events. These damages can result in considerable monetary loss, which in some cases can make up 50% to 100% of the total sustained loss by the building. Despite the detrimental effects of water...

Hurricanes are a main cause of economic losses in many parts of the world, including the state of Florida. They affect the exterior, interior, and the contents of residential buildings. The damage of the interior can be as much as half of the total damage, but the estimation of the interior damage is still somewhat crude. Most damage models estimat...

Risk management programs and catastrophe models use fragility and vulnerability curves extensively. For the case of coastal flood events, the independent variable for these damage functions is usually the inundation depth, sometimes combined with some expression of water velocity or wave action. Postdisaster surveys often provide the basis for thes...

Hurricane Irma made its first landfall in the continental U.S. at Cudjoe Key in southern Florida on September 10, 2017, with Category 4 winds. Irma made its second landfall later that afternoon on Marco Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast, as a Category 3 storm, weakening further as it moved north. Reconnaissance teams respectively dedicated to the Gulf...

On October, 10 2018, Hurricane Michael made landfall just south of Panama City, FL with the National Hurricane Center reporting a minimum pressure 919 MB and maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. Surface observations near the eyewall measured peak wind gusts of at least 130 mph at 10 m height, but gusts may have been higher as several observation sta...

Hurricane Irma made its first landfall in the continental US at Cudjoe Key in southern Florida on September 10, 2017, with Category 4 winds. Irma made its second landfall later that afternoon on Marco Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast, as a Category 3 storm, weakening further as it moved north. Reconnaissance teams respectively dedicated to the Gulf...

Recent large-scale tests provided valuable insight into the wind driven rain deposition distribution and subsequent water surface run-off for low-rise buildings in hurricane conditions. These tests led to better understanding of the phenomena associated with water intrusion through the building envelope, one of the predominant factors contributing...

Hurricanes are a way of life in South Florida, where owning a home without windstorm insurance is almost an impossibility. Insurance premiums for windstorm loses are computed through the use of complex mathematical models called catastrophe (cat) models. When they were first developed, cat models focused on the calculation of average annual loss du...

This paper deals with the efficiency of a hybrid vibration control for rigid buildings structures under earthquakes. The hybrid control consists of a base isolator and tuned mass damper (TMD) or active tuned mass damper (ATMD). The active control force is calculated within a feedback loop by the mean of the linear quadratic controller (LQR) designe...

Annualized hurricane-related losses in the United States are in the billions of dollars. The majority of the coastal population lives in buildings prone to hurricanes, which could result in wind damage (due to high wind and/or wind-driven rain infiltration) and water damage (due to storm surge and waves or freshwater flooding), which are typically...

Engineering research is undergoing dramatic changes with novel, large-scale research facilities being developed to help reduce the growing economic losses associated with natural disasters. The wall of wind (WOW), at Florida International University (FIU), is such an experimental facility, capable of simulating hurricane winds and wind-driven rain...

Natural hazards engineering plays an important role in minimizing the effects of natural hazards on society through the design of resilient and sustainable infrastructure. The DesignSafe cyberinfrastructure has been developed to enable and facilitate transformative research in natural hazards engineering, which necessarily spans across multiple dis...

Catastrophe models appraise the natural risk of the built-infrastructure simulating the interaction of its exposure and vulnerability with a hazard. Because of unique configurations and reduced number, mid/high-rise buildings present singular challenges to the assessment of their damage vulnerability. This paper presents a novel approach to estimat...

The measurements of the hurricane wind effects have been a topic of extensive studies since the devastation of hurricane Andrew in 1992. Various forms of experimental data, both from wind tunnel/hurricane simulator tests to full-scale wireless sensor network (WSN) have been generated. Generally most such data remains under the control of data creat...

This paper reports the investigation outcomes of the recent Super Typhoon Haiyan (also known as Hurricane Yolanda) in the Philippines using a basic structure damage rating technique. The rating technique ranked damaged conditions based on a 0 to 3 rating. A total of 156 structures were analyzed using the rating technique. Unlike previously publishe...

Wind-driven rain (WDR) intrusion through building envelope defects and breaches is a major source of damage to building interior components and contents during hurricane landfall. The extent of total building interior damage (damage to building interior components, utility, and contents) is a function of the total volume of WDR intrusion which in t...

The paper describes a 3-DOF per floor tier building analytical model, which has the capability to incorporate models of either traditional viscous dampers or MR dampers. In its simplest form the analytical model is a scaled two-story structure composed of two rigid square plate supported by four columns each. In the case of the MR dampers, they can...

Wind-driven rain (WDR) effects on various components of a building facade are dependent on the total volume of rainwater deposition. The total volume of WDR deposition at a specific location on the building facade has contributions from both directly impinging raindrops and accumulated surface runoff. The distribution of WDR deposition over the bui...

This paper presents a comprehensive review of methods to assess building vulnerability for hurricane catastrophe models. The review identified five main types of assessment approaches judging by the underlying methodology: past-loss data, enhanced damage data, heuristic, physics, and simulation. The applicability of past-loss data-only vulnerabilit...

Forum papers are thought-provoking opinion pieces or essays founded in fact, sometimes containing speculation, on a civil engineering topic of general interest and relevance to the readership of the journal. The views expressed in this Forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of ASCE or the Editorial Board of the journal.

The hurricanes of recent years have caused many insurers to raise their premiums in response to increased losses. In the long-term, the most effective solution to reduce damage and insurance costs is to apply mitigation techniques. This paper presents a methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of various mitigation measures in reducing wind sto...

Over the course of the 20th century into the 21st century, our understanding of WDR and its effects on the built environment has steadily grown. Advances in measurement systems, rain gauges and theory, to name a few areas, have enabled researchers to further their studies of a topic with unanswered questions. Blocken and Carmeliet (2004) present a...

Light-frame wood buildings represent most of residential structures throughout the United States. Approximately half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the coast with many of those dwellings in the Gulf Coast region or along the eastern seaboard, both of which can be negatively impacted by hurricanes. The majority of damage during a hu...

In this paper, the authors investigate the control of the seismic response of a three dimensional asymmetrical tier-building model, with a combination of three tuned mass dampers (TMD) located on the upper floor of the building. The 3D frame model represents a 3-story steel building designed for the SAC project in Los Angeles, California. All the d...

In recent decades, new alternative approaches such as active, semi active and pas-sive control have been proposed and developed to protect structures from earthquakes and severe winds. Among these control approaches semi active control devices are a very attrac-tive technology for mitigating structural vibrations. One of the most popular semi activ...

Wind-driven rain is one of the main sources of damage to building interior and contents during hurricane landfall. Recently, vulnerability models for hurricane induced total building interior damage (damage to building interior components, utilities, and contents) have been widely developed for prediction of property loss in relation to determinati...

Catastrophe models help to evaluate the vulnerability of the building stock exposed to a hazard. This paper presents a history of the hurricane risk models in Florida, and discusses their relationship to the building codes. The first models were econometric, and failed to predict the insured building losses produced by hurricane Andrew. This led to...

To understand and model the effects of natural hurricane winds on residential buildings, full-scale field testing and analysis are needed. Toward this goal, a group of researchers at Florida Tech, in collaboration with the Florida Coastal Monitoring Project team, have deployed sensors in a real storm scenario and collected roof wind pressure and lo...

This paper presents preliminary results of a study of building damage caused by Hurricane Andrew as a function of building age. The information came from a 68,000 insurance claim records. The building locations were subdivided in regions to reflect wind speeds intensities. In the region close to the hurricane track, the newer buildings on average p...

This paper describes how modelers of the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model (FPHLM) account for and implement various roofing characteristics that reflect the historical building practices and code enforcement in Florida. The life cycle of roofing structural elements, particularly the roof cover, are considered by using an algorithm to estimate wh...

The current hurricane-induced building interior damage prediction model of the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model uses a physically-based algorithm to predict the damage level and the corresponding cost incurred for a specific hurricane wind speed and associated rain event. Building interior damage ratios are estimated through Monte Carlo simulati...

Interior damage is a significant portion of overall building damage caused by hurricanes. Most of the vulnerability models in the literature assess interior damage by expert opinion or with empirical functions of the envelope damage. Interior damage to buildings at low to moderate wind speeds is mainly caused by the ingress of water through breache...

A third generation of wireless sensors was developed to study wind-borne pressure variations in low-rise buildings during hurricanes. The system has the capability of measuring pressure and temperature along a roof, collecting data and sending it to a server to process and publish on the web in near real-time. Also wind speed and direction are meas...

The state of Florida has about $1.8 trillion worth of residential property at risk of hurricane induced loss, and the hurricanes of the past few years have created a crisis in the homeowner insurance market. There is great uncertainty about the nature of the risk and the potential losses for the state as well as the insurance and reinsurance indust...

Florida's population growth in recent decades has produced a steady increase in the concentration of population and infrastructure along its coastline. During this growth period, the vulnerability of the Florida coastline to hurricane impact has been amply demonstrated. The aftermaths unveiled the underlying potential for dramatic economic loss, wh...

The Florida Coastal Monitoring Program (FCMP) is a multi-university field research program that was founded in 1998 to study the near-surface wind and rain characteristics of Atlantic hurricanes and their effects on coastal infrastructure. The FCMP has three research thrusts: (1) characterization of surface wind and wind-driven rain conditions, (2)...

By quantifying economic risk due to damage to building stock, regional loss models for natural hazards are critical in the creation of regional policies, including evacuation strategies and zoning. The increasingly complex interaction between natural hazards and human activities requires more and more accurate data to describe the regional exposure...

This article presents a survey which was carried out to identify the most prevalent residential building types, their characteristics and their distribution in the state of Florida. The databases provided by county property tax appraisers were used for the survey. Detailed statistics on different building components are presented along with an anal...

A wireless sensor network system was developed at Florida Institute of Technology to monitor wind induced pressure on low-rise residential building roofs during hurricane events. The system was tested to evaluate the performance of the sensors and their reliability to measure accurate pressure variations. The reliability of the pressure sensors is...

As an environmental phenomenon, hurricanes cause significant property damage and loss of life in coastal areas almost every year. Although a number of commercial loss projection models have been developed to predict the property losses, only a handful of studies are available in the public domain to predict damage for hurricane prone areas. The sta...

Hurricanes threaten the Florida coast line every year and are capable of causing catastrophic losses. The Public Hurricane Loss Model was developed in response to the need for having an open transparent model to predict the above losses. The results were summarized in the paper “Predicting Losses of Residential Structures in the State of Florida by...

A wireless pressure monitoring system was developed by Florida Institute of Technology to measure wind induced pressure on low-rise structures during hurricanes. This study presents tests made to evaluate the performance of the sensors and their ability to measure accurate pressure variations. To test the reliability of the pressure sensors, a seri...

A methodology is used, for evaluating the effect of various mitigation measures on wind storm losses to residential buildings. Mitigation measures were classified into different categories such as: category A: Roof Cover, category B: Roof Decking, category C: Roof to wall connections, category D: Opening protection, and category E: Wall to sill con...

This paper presents a distributed software system for a wireless sensor network application that remotely monitors the effects of hurricane winds on manmade structures. The software system is divided into three independent segments that are distributed across the Internet to provide real-time collection and transmission of data between wireless rem...

As a follow-up of the initial success of the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model (FPHLM), authorities from the state of Florida decided to expand the model to include commercial-residential buildings that encompass low-rise buildings (1-3 stories) and mid-high rise buildings (4+ stories). The model is devised to provide the state of Florida with a...

A second generation sensor network used for characterization of the impact from hurricane storms on man made structures is described. The network consists of sensor units attached to the structure under consideration, a base unit which orchestrates the measurements over a wireless interface and appropriate wireless and wire line backhaul that deliv...

This paper addresses methods for evaluating the economic feasibility of mitigated residential buildings in Florida. The cost effectiveness of mitigation applied to different types of masonry and timber homes is determined by applying different sets of mitigations. The authors analyzed the cost effectiveness of various combinations of mitigation mea...

In recent years, a multi-disciplinary team has developed the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model. The model combines state-of-the-art technology in the fields of meteorology, engineering, actuarial science, and computer science to predict hurricane-induced losses for single-family homes. The model is now being extended to cover multi-family buildin...

The Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model is one of the first public models accessible for scrutiny to the scientific community, incorporating state of the art techniques in hurricane and vulnerability modeling. The model was developed for Florida, and is applicable to other hurricane-prone regions where construction practice is similar. The 2004 hur...

The Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model is one of the first public models entirely accessible for scrutiny to the scientific community. The model incorporates the latest state of the art techniques in hurricane prediction, and vulnerability modeling based on engineering criteria. Although the model was developed for Florida, its methodology is appl...

A sensor network used for characterization of the impact from hurricane storms on man made structures is described. The network consists of many sensor units attached to the structure under consideration, a base unit which orchestrates the measurements over a wireless interface and appropriate wireless and wireline backhaul that delivers the data t...

The mitigation studies described here were carried on by a team of engineers from different institutions in Florida with the sponsorship of the Florida Sea Grant Consortium. The authors used the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Projection Model for a state of the art comprehensive study of mitigation cost effectiveness in the State of Florida. The wor...

This paper presents a new semi-active tuned mass damper (SATMD), the Magneto-Rheological Tuned Mass Damper or MR-TMD. When subjected to a magnetic field the viscoplastic characteristics of the MR fluid change in milliseconds. Therefore, the MR-TMD can address the detuning problem of passive TMD's by providing variable damping adjustable in real-tim...

This paper describes the development of a remote-sensing and wireless data acquisition system. The system was developed as part of a research effort currently underway to instrument coastal homes in Florida to monitor roof wind pressures during hurricanes. However, the design of the wireless data acquisition is flexible enough to adapt to other mul...

This paper describes the application of a wireless data acquisition system to monitor wind pressures and velocities with absolute pressure sensors and an anemometer. The system was developed for future deployment, as part of a research effort currently underway to instrument coastal homes in Florida to monitor roof wind pressures during hurricanes....

This paper describes the development of a remote sensing and wireless data acquisition system. The system was developed as part of a research effort currently underway to instrument coastal homes in Florida to monitor roof wind pressures during hurricanes. However, the design of tho wireless data acquisition is flexible enough to adapt to other mul...

A wireless multi-point sensor remote sensing system designed and developed for monitoring windstorm pressures on coastal residential structures was deployed during the 2004 hurricane season. Twenty four sensors (23 pressure units plus an anemometer) were installed in an hour on a house roof top to gather the data and sent it to a 10 m distant base...

The paper reports progress in the development of a practical probabilistic model for the estimation of expected annual damage induced by hurricane winds in residential structures. The estimation of the damage is accomplished in several steps. First, basic damage modes for components of specific building types are defined. Second, the damage modes a...

The paper presents the results of a study to define the wind speed limits and conditions beyond which fire and rescue vehicles should not be operated during a hurricane. For that purpose, reduced scale models of a typical fire truck, ambulance, and sports utility vehicle (SUV) were tested in a wind tunnel and surface pressures and overall forces we...

The paper presents a methodology to predict hurricane insurance losses for the State of Florida on an annualized basis and for predefined scenarios. Although several loss prediction commercial products exist in the market, this is one of the first public models entirely accessible for scrutiny to the scientific community. The model incorporates the...

This paper presents a practical probabilistic model for the projection of annualized damage costs to residential structures due to hurricanes. The estimation of the damage is accomplished by first defining the basic damage modes for components of specific building types and their probabilities of occurrence as functions of estimated wind speeds. Th...

Highway signs require breakaway base connections. These connections will slip under impact, therefore preventing injuries to the occupants of an impacting vehicle. The breakaway connection works as long as the tension of the bolts is maintained between an allowable range. A method to ensure that the bolts are tensioned to the proper value is presen...

A conceptual framework for the definition of basic damage states of the corresponding fragility curves, conditional probabilities and its use for the estimation of damage matrices is discussed. Losses due to multiple types of damage were calculated and the damage was included that varied continuously as a function of wind speed. The losses were cal...

In the early morning hours of February 23rd, 1998, seven large tornadoes ravaged central Florida. A total of 42 people were killed and millions of dollars of damage was done. A strip mall and other commercial structures sustained considerable damage and several residential areas were completely destroyed. Based on field observations, the paper exam...

This paper deals with the pullout capacity, the failure cone geometry, and the load deformation behavior for both cast-in-place and post installed undercut anchors embedded in high-strength concretes with compressive strengths of 7500 and 12000 psi. Cast-in-place anchors where embedded at depths of 4, 6, and 8 in., whereas the undercut anchors were...

Properly designed precast concrete cladding could potentially provide lateral stiffness, ductility, and energy dissipation for an overall building structure, especially during earthquakes. This paper describes a set of advanced connections that take advantage of the interaction between facade panels and structure (mainly due to horizontal interstor...

Advanced cladding connections take advantage of the interaction between architectural cladding panels and the building structure to dissipate energy. At the same time, like other passive dissipators, they provide additional lateral stiffness to the structure. A design criterion formulated in terms of energy provides the optimal balance of stiffness...

Ductile cladding connections take advantage of the cladding-structure interaction during an earthquake to dissipate energy. An experimental test program studied the behavior of the different components of a connection system. Analytical models of the connection were incorporated into a 2D model of a six story building with cladding. Time histories...

A ductile cladding connection is a special connecting device between a facade cladding panel and a building structure that is designed to dissipate energy when subjected to an earthquake. The effect of such a device is to reduce the overall seismic response of the structure. A special testing machine was designed to test the behavior of these advan...

This paper addresses methods for evaluating the economic feasibility of mitigated residential buildings in Florida. The cost effectiveness of mitigation applied to different types of masonry and timber homes is determined by applying different sets of mitigations. The authors analyzed the cost effectiveness of various combinations of mitigation mea...

Ph.D. Barry J. Goodno