2018 CoreLogic Storm Surge Report Predicts Risk for Coastal Areas

The 2018 CoreLogic Storm Surge Report was released Thursday by CoreLogic, a global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider.

“While industry predictions for this year’s storm season indicate average activity levels, associated storm surge risk remains an important consideration for residential and commercial properties in the 19 states analyzed,” said Dr. Tom Jeffery, senior hazard scientist at CoreLogic. “Depending on the location of a storm’s landfall and that area’s population density and reconstruction costs, lower Category storms can cause just as much damage as storms in higher categories.”

As the U.S. enters hurricane season, the report shows that more than 6.9 million homes along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts are at potential risk of damage from hurricane storm surge surge with a total reconstruction cost value (RCV) of more than $1.6 trillion (Table 1).

Already according to predictions of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the 2018 hurricane season is expected to have near- to above-normal activity. NOAA predicts a 70 percent chance of 10 to 16 named storms. While not all of them will develop into hurricanes, NOAA predicts five to nine of these will develop into hurricanes, and one to four are predicted to reach Category 3 classification or higher.

According to the report, risk from hurricane-driven storm surge for homes along the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines across 19 states, as well as for 86 metro areas is analyzed in the risk CoreLogic analysis. Homes are categorized by five risk levels: Low (homes affected only by a Category 5 storm), Moderate (homes affected by Category 4 and 5 storms), High (homes affected by Category 3, 4 and 5 storms), Very High (homes affected by Category 2, 3, 4 and 5 storms) and Extreme (homes affected by Category 1-5 storms). RCV figures represent the cost to completely rebuild a property in case of damage – including labor and materials by geographic location – assuming the worst-case scenario at 100-percent destruction.

Regionally, the Atlantic Coast has more than 3.9 million homes at risk of storm surge with an RCV of more than $1 trillion (Table 2), an increase of around $30 billion compared to 2017. The Gulf Coast has more than 3 million homes at risk with over $609 billion in potential exposure to total destruction damage, with over $16 billion increase compared to 2017. Areas with less coastal exposure but with lower elevations that extend inland tend to have more total homes at risk because the surge water can travel farther inland. Additionally, due to market conditions and previous storm surge damage, construction costs can increase despite having a lower number of at-risk homes compared to other states or Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs).

At the state level, Florida has the most coastal exposure and has the most susceptibility to storm surge flooding of the 19 states analyzed, with more than 2.7 million at-risk homes across the five risk categories (Table 3). Louisiana ranks second with over 817,000 at-risk homes, Texas ranks third with more than 543,000 at-risk homes, and New Jersey ranks fourth with over 471,000 at-risk homes. Since the number of homes at risk strongly correlates with the accompanying RCV, Florida also has the highest RCV at over $552 billion (Table 4). Notably, New York ranks second in RCV with over $190 billion, despite its fifth-place ranking in number of homes at risk, due to the density of the residential population near the coast and higher construction costs in this state. Louisiana and New Jersey are also near the top of the list for RCV, with Louisiana totaling more than $186 billion and New Jersey totaling over $146 billion. Texas sits in fifth place for RCV, at more than $103 billion.

Due to the concentration of residences in and around large metro areas, 15 CBSAs account for 67.2 percent of the 6.9 million total at-risk homes and 68.2 percent of the total $1.6 trillion RCV (Table 5). This reinforces the idea that the location of future storms will be integral to understanding the potential for catastrophic damage. A low-intensity storm in a densely populated, residential urban area can do significantly more damage than a higher-intensity hurricane along a sparsely inhabited coastline. The Miami metro area, which includes Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, has the most homes at risk, totaling over 788,000 with an RCV of more than $156 billion. By comparison, the New York metro area has slightly fewer homes at risk at just over 726,000, but a significantly higher RCV totaling more than $277 billion, a 5 percent increase compared to 2017.

CoreLogic’s GIS content products and services are delivered in standard open-formats that can be consumed by a wide variety of GIS Software. For those customers with specialized systems and software the company will customize formats to ensure they can get the most out of our solutions.

“Many of our solutions are available through a variety of delivery methods—via consulting services, API, cloud-based application, and more,” said Jeffrey. “In addition, the level of granularity available makes it possible to be very specific about what you’re looking for and enables a greater degree of accuracy to pinpoint exactly the information necessary to enable better decision-making.”

These tables are shared from the 2018 CoreLogic Storm Surge Report.

Note: The numbers in Tables 1-4 are cumulative, increasing in value from extreme to low. This is based on the explanation that Category 5 storms are low risk because they are least likely to occur but will cause more storm surge flooding inland than higher-risk, lower Category storms.

Table 1 – Total Number of Homes at Risk Nationally and Estimated Reconstruction Cost Value

Note: The numbers in Tables 1-4 are cumulative, increasing in value from extreme to low. This is based on the explanation that Category 5 storms are low risk because they are least likely to occur but will cause more storm surge flooding inland than higher-risk, lower Category storms.

Table 1 – Total Number of Homes at Risk Nationally and Estimated Reconstruction Cost Value

Source: CoreLogic 2018

Table 2 – Residential Property Exposure by Coastal Region

Source: CoreLogic 2018

Table 3 – At Risk Home Totals by State

Source: CoreLogic 2018

*The low risk category refers to Category 5 hurricanes, which are not common along the northeastern Atlantic Coast. States in that region are designated as N/A for this category due to the extremely low probability of a Category 5 storm affecting these areas.

Table 4 – Reconstruction Cost Value of At Risk Homes by State

Source: CoreLogic 2018
*The low risk category refers to Category 5 hurricanes, which are not common along the northeastern Atlantic Coast. States in that region are designated as N/A for this category due to the extremely low probability of a Category 5 storm affecting these areas.

Table 5 – Top 15 Metropolitan Areas for Storm Surge Risk

Source: CoreLogic 2018

Tags: ArcGIS, climate change, cloud, CoreLogic, data, ESRI, geospatial, GIS, hurricanes, Infrastructure, intelligence, Intergraph, lbs, location, mapping, maps, mobile, navigation, NOAA, real estate, storm surge

Categories: analytics, Big Data, climate change, CoreLogic, data, developers, disaster relief, FEMA, geospatial, GIS, lidar, location based services, location intelligence, mapping, NOAA, OpenGeo, satellite based tracking, satellite imagery, telecommunications

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2018 at 7:54 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.