Vulnerability in a Tropical Cyclone Risk Model: Philippines Case Study

Abstract

The authors describe a tropical cyclone risk model for the Philippines, using methods that are open-source and can be straightforwardly generalized to other countries. Wind fields derived from historical observations, as well as those from an environmentally-forced tropical cyclone hazard model are combined with data representing exposed value and vulnerability to determine asset losses. Exposed value is represented by the LitPop dataset, which assumes total asset value is distributed across a country following population density and nightlights data. Vulnerability is assumed to follow a functional form previously proposed by Emanuel (2011), with free parameters chosen by a sensitivity analysis in which simulated and historical reported damages are compared for different parameter values, and further constrained by information from household surveys about regional building characteristics. Use of different vulnerability parameters for the region around Manila yields much better agreement between simulated and actually reported losses than does a single set of parameters for the entire country. Despite the improvements from regionally refined vulnerability, the model predicts no losses for a substantial number of destructive historical storms, a difference the authors hypothesize is due to the use of wind speed as the sole metric of tropical cyclone hazard, omitting explicit representation of storm surge and/or rainfall. Bearing these limitations in mind, this model can be used to estimate return levels for tropical cyclone-caused wind hazards and asset losses for regions across the Philippines, relevant to some disaster risk reduction and management tasks; this model also provides a platform for further development of open-source tropical cyclone risk modeling.