This meeting was used to walk through the modules required to estimate the damage that occurs to a property.
Bill Coburn
- Discussed two hypothetical buildings for reference
- Used pictometry to get information about the building that is no longer there
- Can calculate almost everything about the building using pictures
- Can get other information from the Galveston County tax office such as age
- It is important to know where entry points in the building are such as doors, windows and garages, window area, proximity to water
- Also need to know the elevation of the building and at what point the lowest horizontal structural member is
Douglas Smith
- Must gather histories such as wave time, wind time, surge time, etc.
- Want to minimize any potential error in judging times
- Enables a damage estimate to be developed and a hazard definition
- Enables the determination of when a structure toppled due to wind damage
Samuel Amaroso
- Next the damage module is used
- It takes input from the hazard module and the initial property database
- This will determine a time of collapse and layered with that, histories of component damage due to wind
- The damage module predicts time histories of damage to individual components of the structure as a function of time
- The point is to estimate at which point in time the structure toppled and how much wind was assessed versus waves and surge at that time
Two properties with very similar locations were used, as analysis was done it was determined that what happened to the slab only structure was consistent with predictions of what actually happened; trying to help underscore that there is a method to the approach when trying to adjust claims. It isn’t easy to determine what happened before a building toppled but if enough information is gathered about the building, storm and location a reasonably sound estimate of what happened can be developed.
TDI is going to reach out to people in the profession who will review the methodology and they will offer their feedback. That should happen within the first quarter of the next year. Then final recommendations will be developed and presented to TDI who will then accept all, some or none of the recommendation. The commissioner will have the final say over whether or not the recommendation is used.
Public Comment
- Audience member asked if breakaway walls and other walls that are designed to fail are taken into account
- At this point that distinction has not been made yet but the recognition has been made that those should be taken into account