Investigation the effect of Land Characteristics on Hurricane Freshwater Flood Vulnerability

Abstract

This study analyses two comparison examples (hurricanes Frances versus Jeanne and hurricanes Rita versus Irene) to account for the catchment characteristics and social factors for the area impacted by the track of a tropical cyclone. This will result in a way of categorizing tropical cyclone, which can be combined with the previous meteorological indexes to better assess the potential impact of each tropical cyclone from a hazard mitigation and the disaster response perspective. Given that the highest correlation between fatalities and damage occurs for the rainfall index TCRI, vulnerability to rainfall was selected as the focus of the research. The results show that the impacted areas and the population who lives in the impacted areas are two important indicators of flood vulnerability. The new index (TRI) yields a lower RMSE in rank position, at 3.5 and 2.2, compared with the SSHE at 5.8 and 5.7 for selected hurricane damage and death toll, respectively.

Keywords

• tropical cyclone
• hurricane hazard
• risk index
• land characteristics
• social factors