Jeffrey Czajkowski

The Dynamics of Hurricane Risk Perception: Real-Time Evidence from the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season

Findings are reported from two field studies that measured the evolution of coastal residents’ risk perceptions and preparation plans as two hurricanes — Isaac and Sandy — were approaching the United States coast during the 2012 hurricane season. The data suggest that residents threatened by such storms had a poor understanding of the threat posed by the storms; they over-estimated the likelihood that their homes would be subject to hurricane-force wind conditions, but under-estimated the potential damage that such winds could cause, and they misconstrued the greatest threat as coming from wind rather than water. These misperceptions translated into preparation actions that were not well commensurate with the nature and scale of the threat they faced, with residents being well prepared for a modest wind event of short duration but not for a significant wind-and-water catastrophe. Possible causes of the biases and policy implications for improving hurricane warning communication are discussed.

The Impact of Technical and Non-technical Measures of Water Quality on Coastal Waterfront Property Values in South Florida

Abstract Due to the unprecedented population growth and increased economic activity in coastal areas, the health and hence value of coastal waterbody resources have been the subject of interest in recent years. In this article we estimate the value of a healthy waterbody through a hedonic property price analysis utilizing water quality as the amenity of interest. We compare hedonic analysis results using technical measures of water quality to the results using a non-technical measure of water quality “location grade” available in an urban coastal housing market of South Florida. Our results indicate that water quality improvement is associated with higher property values. In the comparison between technical and non-technical measures of water quality, we find that the technical measures provide better prediction of housing prices than the non-technical location grade. We further impute implicit prices for water quality improvement where significant mean willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates range from

As the Wind Blows? Understanding Hurricane Damages at the Local Level through a Case Study Analysis

7,531 to

Is It Time to Go yet? Understanding Household Hurricane Evacuation Decisions from a Dynamic Perspective

43,158. JEL Classification Codes: Q25, Q51, R21, D60

Quantifying Riverine and Storm‐Surge Flood Risk by Single‐Family Residence: Application to Texas

An understanding of the potential drivers of local-scale hurricane losses is developed through a case study analysis. Two recent category-3 U.S. landfalling hurricanes (Ivan in 2004 and Dennis in 2005) are analyzed that, although similar in terms of maximum wind speed at their proximate coastal landfall locations, caused vastly different loss amounts. In contrast to existing studies that assess loss mostly at the relatively aggregate level, detailed local factors related to hazard, exposure, and vulnerability are identified. State-level raw wind insured loss data split by personal, commercial, and auto business lines are downscaled to the census tract level using the wind field. At this scale, losses are found to extend far inland and across business lines. Storm size is found to play an important role in explaining the different loss amounts by controlling not only the size of the impacted area but also the duration of damaging winds and the likelihood of large changes in wind direction. An empirical analysis of census tract losses provides further evidence for the importance of wind duration and wind directional change in addition to wind speed. The importance of exposure values however is more sensitive to assumptions in how loss data are downscaled. Appropriate consideration of these local drivers of hurricane loss may improve historical loss assessments and may also act upscale to impact future projections of hurricane losses under climate and socioeconomic change.

Determining tropical cyclone inland flooding loss on a large scale through a new flood peak ratio-based methodology

To better understand household hurricane evacuation decisions, this paper addresses a limitation to existing hurricane evacuation modeling aspects by developing a dynamic model of hurricane evacuation behavior. A households evacuation decision is framed as an optimal stopping problem where every potential evacuation time period prior to the actual hurricane landfall, the households optimal choice is to either evacuate, or to wait one more time period for a revised hurricane forecast. We build a realistic multiperiod model of evacuation that incorporates actual forecast and evacuation cost data for our designated Gulf of Mexico region. Results from our multiperiod model are calibrated with existing evacuation timing data from a number of hurricanes. Given the calibrated dynamic framework, a number of policy questions that plausibly affect the timing of household evacuations are analyzed, and a deeper understanding of existing empirical outcomes in regard to the timing of the evacuation decision is achieved. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)NH.1527-6996.0000037.

Assessing Current and Future Freshwater Flood Risk from North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones via Insurance Claims

The development of catastrophe models in recent years allows for assessment of the flood hazard much more effectively than when the federally run National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968. We propose and then demonstrate a methodological approach to determine pure premiums based on the entire distribution of possible flood events. We apply hazard, exposure, and vulnerability analyses to a sample of 300,000 single-family residences in two counties in Texas (Travis and Galveston) using state-of-the-art flood catastrophe models. Even in zones of similar flood risk classification by FEMA there is substantial variation in exposure between coastal and inland flood risk. For instance, homes in the designated moderate-risk X500/B zones in Galveston are exposed to a flood risk on average 2.5 times greater than residences in X500/B zones in Travis. The results also show very similar average annual loss (corrected for exposure) for a number of residences despite their being in different FEMA flood zones. We also find significant storm-surge exposure outside of the FEMA designated storm-surge risk zones. Taken together these findings highlight the importance of a microanalysis of flood exposure. The process of aggregating risk at a flood zone level-as currently undertaken by FEMA-provides a false sense of uniformity. As our analysis indicates, the technology to delineate the flood risks exists today.

Affordability of the National Flood Insurance Program: Application to Charleston County, South Carolina

In recent years, the United States has been severely affected by numerous tropical cyclones (TCs) which have caused massive damages. While media attention mainly focuses on coastal losses from storm surge, these TCs have inflicted significant devastation inland as well. Yet, little is known about the relationship between TC-related inland flooding and economic losses. Here we introduce a novel methodology that first successfully characterizes the spatial extent of inland flooding, and then quantifies its relationship with flood insurance claims. Hurricane Ivan in 2004 is used as illustration. We empirically demonstrate in a number of ways that our quantified inland flood magnitude produces a very good representation of the number of inland flood insurance claims experienced. These results highlight the new technological capabilities that can lead to a better risk assessment of inland TC flood. This new capacity will be of tremendous value to a number of public and private sector stakeholders dealing with disaster preparedness.

Moral Hazard in Natural Disaster Insurance Markets: Empirical Evidence from Germany and the United States

The most recent decades have witnessed record breaking losses associated with U.S. landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs). Flood-related damages represent a large portion of these losses, and although storm surge is typically the main focus in the media and of warnings, much of the TC flood losses are instead freshwater-driven, often extending far inland from the landfall locations. Despite this actuality, knowledge of TC freshwater flood risk is still limited. Here we provide for the first time a comprehensive assessment of the TC freshwater flood risk from the full set of all significant flood events associated with U.S. landfalling TCs from 2001 to 2014. We find that the areas impacted by freshwater flooding are nearly equally divided between coastal and inland areas. We determine the statistical relationship between physical hazard and residential economic impact at a community level for the entire country. These results allow us to assess the potential future changes in TC freshwater flood risk due to changing climate pattern and urbanization in a more heavily populated U.S. Findings have important implications for flood risk management, insurance and resilience.

Convective Storm Vulnerability: Quantifying the Role of Effective and Well-Enforced Building Codes in Minimizing Missouri Hail Property Damage

AbstractIn March 2014, Congress passed legislation delaying the phasing-in of premium increases on discounted flood insurance policies that had been authorized in July 2012 by the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act. This reversal highlights the tension between the realization of risk-based premiums and affordability of flood insurance for homeowners in flood-prone areas. This study on Charleston County, South Carolina, seeks to understand how the tension can be resolved using a voucher program coupled with required mitigation. It specifically focuses on home elevation as the mitigation method. This paper demonstrates a potential average increase of 108 to 159% for high-risk single-family properties in Special Flood Hazard Areas in Charleston moving from a current discounted premium to a full risk-based premium as proposed by the 2012 legislation. Implementation of the proposed voucher program coupled with required mitigation can reduce government expenditures by more than half over a program that d...