GOALI Project Summary
It is estimated that insured losses (those protected by insurance) in the United States from natural hazards reached $22 billion in 1999, the second largest loss during the 1990’s to the $26 billion of 1992, the year Hurricane Andrew struck Florida and Louisiana. In addition, during the past 50 years, 250 great natural catastrophes in the world claimed the lives of over 1.4 million people and caused economic losses (insured and uninsured) of $960 billion. The U.S. House of Representatives is working on the bill H.R. 2020, also known as the “Hurricane, Tornado and Related Hazards Research Act”, to promote inter-disciplinary research in understanding and mitigating windstorm related hazard impact in the next 10 years. Two of the seven research and development elements of this bill, specifically mention the need for research in developing “new methodologies for improved loss estimation and risk assessment systems for predicting and evaluating damaging windstorm impacts and for identifying, evaluating, and reliably characterizing windstorm hazards”.
 Recognizing this critical need, the GOALI research proposed here aims to develop an integrated framework to combine the understanding of spatio-temporal variability of hurricane occurrences and physical aspects of infrastructural stability to better estimate/predict infrastructure reliability and consequently, the losses. This will enable optimal planning and management of resources in the short (e.g., disaster preparedness) and long term (e.g., town planning) by public and private sector agencies.
Why GOALI?
	Considerable research is being focused on understanding hurricane variability (by climate scientists) and also on developing improved structural risk assessment techniques (by structural engineers). The industry has developed empirical loss estimation methods using mainly wind speed and loss data (from insurers and not available to general public). Structural aspects such as the age and life-cycle, that will have significant impact on the loss estimation, are not considered. Better estimation of losses are key to optimal decision making (also recognized by H.R. 2020) which requires integration of knowledge from these three groups. This cannot be accomplished without an industry partner – which led to the proposed GOALI. Our industry partner (Risk Engineering, http://www.riskeng.com), has extensive experience with hurricane track simulation and loss estimation and is located in Boulder, which makes it very easy for effective collaboration. 
Objectives of the study
	In an effort to developing the integrated framework for structural reliability and loss estimation, key objectives of this study are to develop: (1) An enhanced hurricane track simulation model – to simulate hurricanes and the associated precipitation and flooding attributes, (2) Methods for estimating structural load from multiple sources during hurricanes (winds, rainfall, etc.), (3) Structural failure models, (4) Infrastructure reliability estimation as a function of time and the life-cycle, (5) Structural loss estimation, and (6) applicable building classifications. The estimated structural reliability and the loss will be conveniently visualized using appropriate GIS applications.  The structural reliability model will be developed for the dominant stock of structures (e.g., wood frame , masonry, etc.) in the Southeastern U.S. and Gulf region. The proposed framework will also be tested over this region of the country. 
Intellectual Merit
The proposed conceptual framework brings together the knowledge of  (a) large-scale climate variability and impacts on hurricane occurrences and steering; (b) structural loading and failure models; (c) stochastic modeling framework for generating scanarios and consequently, risk estimation/prediction, (d) structural loss esetimation and, (e) decision making under uncertainty. This unique and integrative approach to infrastructure reliability and loss estimation is the main intellectual merit of this proposal.
Broader Impacts
The integrative framework to estimate infrastructure losses due to hurricane hazards provides key inputs and powerful tools for planners and decision makers at local, regional and national levels, and will result in significant socio-economic benefits. The framework is flexible in that it can be extended to include other hazards. The proposed efforts complement initiatives such as HAZUS by FEMA (http://www.fema.gov/hazus). Furthermore, the tools will be fully integrated into existing courses and new courses that will be developed and, also help in meeting ABET’s a-k criteria.