HI2: A New Measure of Hurricane Impact for Innovation in Enterprise Risk Management

本研究的目的是创建一个飓风影响指数（HI 2），作为企业风险管理创新的基础和催化剂。由于全球气候变化和沿海地区的快速增长，企业和社区在防备自然灾害和灾后恢复方面面临前所未有的挑战。风险管理中用于减轻单个企业不利情况的严重性和/或频率的传统方法、过程和技术已被证明在飓风等灾难性事件中无效，飓风的影响范围要大得多，并且通常是非线性的。拟议的飓风影响指数是一种范式转变，旨在通过观察物理和经济条件以及系统相互依赖性的高级建模，持续衡量对业务运营和经济绩效的实际影响。它将从根本上改变飓风风险的特征，管理和减轻的方式，旨在填补量化和建模飓风引起的损失的关键知识空白。这项研究的框架可以很容易地扩展到其他自然灾害，如地震和洪水。具体目标包括：1）全面和持续评估建筑环境的实际损害; 2）制定和验证飓风影响指数。这项工作的成功将标志着我们朝着建立更有效、透明和市场驱动的风险转移和风险对冲替代机制的长期目标迈出了重要一步。飓风影响指数的创建将产生更强大和更具成本效益的金融工具，以补充现有的基于天气的衍生品和保险政策。它不仅可以在激励风险管理创新方面发挥关键作用，还可以支持有关社区可持续性和复原力的决策和政策制定。该项目包括一项计划，除了标准的学术渠道外，还通过讲习班、技术转让和商业化广泛传播研究结果。该项目将支持风科学和工程的博士生，并持续努力从代表性不足的群体中招收学生。这些活动将共同为研究生和本科生提供宝贵的培训机会，培养下一代多学科灾害研究专家，并为减灾知识库作出贡献。

The objective of this research is to create a Hurricane Impact Index (HI2) serving as basis and catalyst for innovation in enterprise risk management. As a result of global climate change and rapid growth in coastal regions, businesses and communities are facing unprecedented challenges in preparing for and recovering from natural disasters. Traditional methods, processes, and techniques in risk management used for mitigating severity and/or frequency of adverse situations at individual enterprises have proven ineffective in catastrophic events like hurricanes whose impacts are experienced on a much larger scale and in manners that are often nonlinear. The proposed Hurricane Impact Index is a paradigm shift aimed at continuously measuring realized effect on business operations and economic performance through observation of physical and economic conditions and advanced modeling of system interdependencies. It would fundamentally transform the way hurricane risk is characterized, managed, and mitigated with the aim to fill a critical knowledge gap in quantifying and modeling hurricane-induced damages. The framework of this research can be readily extended to other natural hazards such as earthquake and flooding. Specific aims to be pursued include: 1) Comprehensive and continual assessment of physical damages to built environment; and 2) Development and validation of the Hurricane Impact Index. The success of this work will represent an important step towards our long term goal of establishing alternative mechanisms of risk transfer and risk hedging that are more efficient, transparent, and market-driven.The creation of Hurricane Impact Index will give rise to more powerful and cost-effective financial instruments complementing existing weather-based derivatives and insurance policies. It can play a crucial role in not only stimulating innovations in risk management but also supporting decision making and policymaking on community sustainability and resiliency. Integrated in the project is a plan for broad dissemination of findings through workshops and technology transfer and commercialization in addition to standard academic outlets. The project will support doctoral students in wind science and engineering with sustained effort for recruiting students from underrepresented groups. These activities collectively will provide valuable training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, nurture the next generation of experts in multidisciplinary disaster-focused research, and contribute to the knowledgebase of hazard mitigation.