Potential changes in hurricane risk profile across the United States coastal regions under climate change scenarios

Abstract

Hurricane risk varies widely across the different regions of the United States. The spatial variation of the risk could be further impacted by future climate scenarios and the consideration of impact of climate change on future regional hurricane risk is necessary for long-term planning of built infrastructure. Therefore, climate-dependent hurricane risks across eight different locations of the US south and east coast are investigated in this study. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the risks, hurricane risk is assessed using three different metrics, including wind speed, annual individual building loss ratio, and regional loss, each of which can provide valuable insight for different risk management context. For all the locations, future hurricane risk is found to be higher than present, though the degree of increase differs by the location and the metric used.