MCA Pilot PUI: Validating and Constraining Catastrophe Models with Paleo Tropical Cyclone Data for Enhanced Risk Management

热带气旋(TC)对人口稠密的沿海社区构成严重威胁。佛罗里达州的海岸线尤其如此。沿着佛罗里达海岸，人口和财产的大规模集中导致最近人类接触热带气旋登陆的数量迅速增加。飓风伊恩于2022年9月28日在佛罗里达州西南海岸登陆。这场风暴呈现了通常与飓风相关的所有三种危险：风、雨和风暴潮。但到目前为止，最灾难性的影响来自风暴潮。迈尔斯堡海滩的最高水位达到了近16英尺。飓风伊恩可能是美国历史上损失最大的自然灾害之一，损失高达1129亿美元。在风险行业，这种低概率、高影响的事件被称为“尾部风险事件”。尾部风险事件往往造成广泛的经济混乱，也往往与重大和毁灭性的生命损失有关。这项研究将通过古温学的方法将佛罗里达西南部的飓风记录追溯到数千年前。将对沿海“蓝洞”的沉积岩心进行分析，以重建该地区TCS的历史。这将使人们更清楚地了解热带气旋在美国海岸线的频率分布，从而减少热带气旋造成的生命和基础设施损失。该项目还将与更广泛的风险管理和模型界建立联系。这些伙伴关系将确保古研究能够适当地与灾难风险决策者联系在一起。生成的项目数据不仅将被风险行业使用，还将被其他利益相关者使用。其他利益相关者包括农业企业、栖息地恢复团体、沿海土地管理者、个人业主、市政当局、科学家和企业。这些数据可进一步用于与应急管理人员、媒体、社区领袖和整个社区进行接触。3)在合作伙伴ReAsk的指导和合作下，PI将了解随机TC数据集是如何开发的，它们如何输入动态风暴潮模型，以及它们如何结合起来产生风险估计。

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are a serious threat for densely populated coastal communities. This is particularly true for the Florida coastline. Along the Florida coast, sprawling concentrations of people and properties have resulted in a recent rapid increase in human exposure to TC landfalls. Hurricane Ian made landfall on the Southwest Florida coast on September 28, 2022. This storm presented all three of the hazards commonly associated with hurricanes: wind, rain, and storm-tide surge. But by far the most catastrophic impacts were from the storm-tide surge. High water marks on Fort Myers Beach reached near 16 feet. Hurricane Ian could be one of the costliest natural disasters in US history at $112.9 billion USD. In the risk industry, such low-probability, high-impact events like these are known as “Tail-Risk Events.” Tail-Risk Events often cause widespread economic chaos, and they are also often associated with substantial and devastating loss of life. This research will extend the Southwest Florida hurricane record back thousands of years by means of Paleotempestology. Sediment cores from coastal “blue holes” will be analyzed to reconstruct the history of TCs in the area. This will result in a more robust understanding of the TC frequency distribution along the US coastline, thereby reducing the loss of life and infrastructure attributable to TCs. This project will also connect to the broader risk management and modelling communities. These partnerships will ensure that the paleo research can appropriately attach to catastrophe risk decision-makers. Project data generated will not only be used by the risk industry, but by other stakeholders as well. The other stakeholders include agricultural businesses; habitat restoration groups; coastal land managers; individual property owners, municipalities, scientists, and business. The data can further be used to outreach to emergency managers, the media, community leaders and the community at large. This project will also have a significant impact on diversity in STEM by supporting underrepresented minorities in STEM.This Mid-Career Advancement (MCA) project will involve four different, but highly interconnected and interdisciplinary activities: 1) With the mentorship and collaboration from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) the team will build on Southwest Florida’s long-term TC dataset, by adding new reconstructions from Southwest Florida blue holes; 2) With the mentorship and collaboration from partner Oasis the PI will receive training on the Oasis Loss Modeling Framework (LMF), attend training workshops and deploy models, and learn about how catastrophe (Cat) models are used to inform views of risk; 3) With the mentorship and collaboration from partner Reask the PI will learn how stochastic TC data sets are developed, how they feed into dynamical storm surge models, and how they combine to produce risk estimates. The research will identify what types of storms in stochastic catalogues are able to deposit geologic TC layers and complete sensitivity analyses for field sites of interest; and 4) With the mentorship and collaboration from partner Maximum Information the research will bring new intense TC landfall paleo datasets, that are temporally an order of magnitude greater than the existing instrumental historical record, to risk modeling firms and (re)insurance companies. In summary, the estimated paleo TC return periods calculated during this study will be used in baseline Cat model validation, calibration and deterministic scenario (stress) testing (which inform views of Maximum Probable/Possible Loss).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.