Hurricane Catastrophe Modeling
CORE AREA: Long-term hurricane impacts
STATE OF FLORIDA RISK MODEL:
The Florida Hurricane Loss Projection model was developed for the
people of Florida to provide an open, public, methodology for
estimating average annual insured loss due to hurricane wind
damage:
• The historical hurricane climate is used to simulate hurricane activity
out to thousands of years using Monte Carlo modeling
• Individual storms are simulated throughout a threat area centered
on Florida
• Peak winds at each zip code determine wind risk probability
• The wind probabilities are fed to an engineering damage model
which in-turn feeds an actuarial model to compute insured losses

METHODOLOGY:
• Motion and intensity are modeled as Markov processes based on
seasonal historic motion distributions
• Wind fields are modeled for all hurricanes landfalling or bypassing
within a damage threshold distance of a zip code
• A PBL slab model for the equations of motion is solved given
motion, pressure, Rmax, and pressure profile inputs
• PBL winds are adjusted to the surface based on results of GPS
sonde research, for open and marine exposures.
• Zip code winds are computed based on remote sensing estimates
of upstream roughness based on land use land cover.
• The model meets strict standards of the Florida Commission
• Office of Insurance Regulation will use model as a baseline to
evaluate results of proprietary models used for justifying insurance
rate increases