NATIONAL WINDSTORM IMPACT 

REDUCTION PROGRAM

Biennial Report to Congress for Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012

Executive Office of the President

National Science and Technology Council
1

About the National Science and Technology Council

The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) is the principal means by which the Executive 

Branch coordinates science and technology policy across the diverse entities that make up the Federal 

research and development enterprise. A primary objective of the NSTC is establishing clear national 

goals for Federal science and technology investments. The NSTC prepares research and development 

strategies that are coordinated across Federal departments and agencies to form investment packages 

aimed at accomplishing multiple national goals. The work of the NSTC is organized under five 

committees: Environment, Natural Resources and Sustainability; Homeland and National Security; 

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Education; Science; and Technology. Each of these 

committees oversees subcommittees and working groups focused on different aspects of science and 

technology. More information is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/nstc.

About the Office of Science and Technology Policy

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was established by the National Science and 

Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976. OSTP’s responsibilities include advising the 

President in policy formulation and budget development on questions in which science and technology 

are important elements; articulating the President’s science and technology policy and programs; and 

fostering strong partnerships among Federal, state, and local governments, and the scientific 

communities in industry and academia. The Director of OSTP also serves as Assistant to the President for 

Science and Technology and manages the NSTC. More information is available at 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp.

About Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction (SDR)

The purpose of the SDR is to provide all relevant Federal agencies a focused forum for information 

sharing; development of collaborative opportunities; formulation of science- and technology-based 

guidance for policy makers; and dialogue with the U.S. policy community to advance informed strategies 

for managing disaster risks. Under its mandate, the SDR advises the White House Office of Science and 

Technology Policy (OSTP) and others about relevant risk reduction resources and the related work of 

SDR Member Agencies.

Federal Copyright Information

This document is a work of the United States Government and is in the public domain (see 17 U.S.C. 

§105). Subject to the stipulations below, it may be distributed and copied with acknowledgment to 

OSTP. Copyrights to graphics included in this document are reserved by the original copyright holders or 

their assignees and are used here under the government’s license and by permission. Requests to use 

any images must be made to the provider identified in the image credits or to OSTP if no provider is

identified. 
2

Report prepared by

NATIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL

COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT, NATURAL RESOURCES, AND SUSTAINABILITY (CENRS)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON DISASTER REDUCTION (SDR)

National Science and Technology Council

Chair Staff

John P. Holdren Jayne B. Morrow (beginning June 1, 2013)

Assistant to the President for Science and Executive Director

Technology and Director, Pedro I. Espina (through May 31, 2013)

Office of Science and Technology Policy Executive Director

Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Sustainability

Co-Chairs

Tamara Dickinson Kathryn Sullivan

Principal Assistant Director for Environment and Acting Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere;

Energy Administrator of the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration

Office of Science and Technology Policy Department of Commerce

Glenn Paulson Staff

Science Advisor Lisa Matthews

Environmental Protection Agency Executive Secretary

Environmental Protection Agency

Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction

Co-Chairs Staff

David Applegate Barbara Haines-Parmele

Associate Director for Natural Hazards Executive Secretary

United States Geological Survey

Department of the Interior

Margaret Davidson Bret Schothorst

Acting Director of the Office of Ocean and Executive Secretary

Coastal Resource Management

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Department of Commerce

Dennis Wenger

Program Director for Infrastructure Systems 

Management and Extreme Events

National Science Foundation
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Windstorm Working Group

Co-Chairs Staff

Kishor Mehta Bret Schothorst

Program Director in the Division of Civil, Executive Secretary

Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovation

National Science Foundation

Frederick Toepfer

Program Manager of the Hurricane Forecast

Improvement Program, National Weather Service

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Department of Commerce

Members

Harold Bosch Federal Highway Administration, Department of Transportation

Edward Laatsch Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security

Marc Levitan National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Commerce
4

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

NATIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20502

Dear Members of Congress,

I am pleased to transmit to you the report, National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program, a 

Biennial Report to Congress for Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, produced by the National Science and 

Technology Council’s (NSTC) Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction and its Windstorm Working 

Group. 

Windstorms such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe and fast-moving thunderstorm complexes are 

among the most destructive and economically-damaging hazards that affect the United States on an 

annual basis. Each year, windstorms claim lives, cause injuries, and result in billions of dollars in 

property damage. In recent decades, rapid development and population growth in areas at high-risk 

of windstorm hazards have posed increased risks to the Nation. 

In 2004, as part of a Government-wide effort to counteract that trend, Congress called for the 

establishment a National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP), a coordinated approach 

to achieve major reductions in windstorm-related losses of life and property. In 2006, the Windstorm 

Working Group delivered to Congress a Windstorm Impact Reduction Implementation Plan, which 

identified research activities needed to improve windstorm hazard mitigation and served as a guide 

for Federal agencies to coordinate new and existing research to fill knowledge gaps in understanding, 

predicting, and forecasting windstorms. Subsequently, NWIRP member-agencies contributed to the 

development of a series of 15 implementation plans, which articulated necessary steps for reducing 

windstorm impacts. This series included plans that prescribed specific actions for mitigating impacts 

of hurricane and tornado hazards, as well as the coastal inundation and flood hazards that hurricanes 

and other windstorms often produce. 

This new report fulfills NSTC’s congressionally mandated responsibility to provide biennial reports 

on the NWIRP. Overall, it finds that the Program has successfully facilitated improvements in 

forecast models, warning systems, evacuation planning, structural-design technology, and 

community preparedness. These improvements have reduced vulnerabilities to windstorms even as 

the quantity of people, buildings, and critical infrastructure exposed to windstorms across the country 

has grown dramatically. 

In coordination with academia and the private sector, the NWIRP agencies look forward to 

identifying and prioritizing additional research and development needs and achieving even greater 

successes in windstorm-impact reduction.

Sincerely,

John P. Holdren

Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy

Assistant to the President for Science and Technology
5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. BACKGROUND...................................................................................................................................6

2. THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM.....................................................................................................6

3. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES AND AGENCY ROLES .........................................................................7

4. PROGRESS IN FISCAL YEARS 2011 AND 2012........................................................................9

4.1 Understanding Windstorms for Improved Predictions, Forecasts, and Warnings... 9

4.1.1 Hurricanes......................................................................................................................................9

4.1.2 Tornadoes, Thunderstorms, and Other Severe Weather ......................................... 11

4.2 Assessing and Reducing Windstorm Impacts........................................................................15

4.2.1 Buildings and Structures....................................................................................................... 15

4.2.2 Bridges and Highways............................................................................................................ 20

4.2.3 Power Grid, Aviation, and U.S. Space Centers.............................................................. 22

4.2.4 Community Services and Resilience ................................................................................. 23

4.3 Outreach ...............................................................................................................................................25

5. THE NEED FOR CONTINUED INVESTMENT ..........................................................................28

APPENDIX A: AGENCY ACTIVITES IN FISCAL YEARS 2009 AND 2010.........................30

APPENDIX B: AGENCY ACTIVITES IN FISCAL YEARS 2007 AND 2008.........................44

APPENDIX C: KEY ABBREVIATIONS........................................................................................54
6

1. BACKGROUND

In 2004, Congress recognized that rapid development and population growth in high-risk areas 

during the preceding decades had greatly increased the Nation’s overall vulnerability to 

windstorm hazards. To counteract that trend, Congress prescribed the establishment of a 

coordinated Federal-agency effort – the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program 

(NWIRP) – to achieve major reductions in windstorm-related losses of life and property. The 

NWIRP has been successful in its mission of facilitating improvements in forecast models, 

warning systems, evacuation planning, structural-design technology, and community 

preparedness. These improvements have reduced vulnerabilities to windstorms—even as the 

quantity of people, buildings, and critical infrastructure exposed to windstorms across the 

country has grown dramatically in recent years. 

Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012 brought windstorms of increased frequency and intensity. An

historic number of powerful and destructive tornadoes struck the Southeastern and Midwestern 

regions of the United States, and elevated hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin during the same 

period resulted in devastating impacts from Hurricanes Irene, Isaac, and, more recently, Sandy. 

Windstorms that struck the United States in 2011 alone took nearly 700 lives and injured nearly

7,000 people,1causing an estimated $11 billion in total direct property losses in the process.

2 As 

these impacts demonstrate, the continued support and leadership of senior Federal policymakers 

in reducing windstorm impacts through enhanced knowledge and applied science and technology 

is critical to increasing disaster resilience throughout the Nation.

2. THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM

Windstorms such as hurricanes and tornadoes are among the most destructive and economicallydamaging hazards that affect the United States on an annual basis. Each year, these storms claim 

lives, cause injuries, and result in billions of dollars in property damages. The outbreak of 

tornadoes that occurred during April 25 - 28, 2011 in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and 

Georgia, and on May 22, 2011 in Joplin, Missouri was the deadliest and most destructive group 

of tornadoes to affect the United States in more than 50 years, killing 479 people.

3 April 2011 is 

ranked as the country’s most active tornado month on record, with 753 tornadoes—more than 

200 tornadoes above the previous record for any month, set in May 2004.

4

The fiscal period of this report also saw significant impacts from hurricanes and other tropical 

cyclones, with the 2011 and 2012 seasons marking two consecutive years during which several

portions of the country sustained devastation from these storms. Windstorms struck many parts 

of the country, including Tropical Storms Beryl and Debby in Florida, Hurricanes Isaac in 

 

1 NOAA/NWS fatality and injury data (2011) for tornado, thunderstorm wind, hurricane/tropical storm, and high 

wind hazards, http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats/sum11.pdf

2 NOAA/NWS property loss data (2011) for tornado, thunderstorm wind, hurricane/tropical storm, and high wind 

hazards, http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats/sum11.pdf

3 NOAA/NWS, 2011 Tornado Information, http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/2011_tornado_information.html

4 NOAA/NWS, 2011 Tornado Information, http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/2011_tornado_information.html
7

Louisiana, Irene in the Mid-Atlantic region, and Sandy in New York and New Jersey.5 Most 

notably, Sandy in late October 2012 during Fiscal Year 2013 caused fatalities and injuries, 

widespread power outages, and tremendous destruction from coastal storm surge, heavy rainfall, 

inland flooding, and high wind. Preliminary loss estimates due to residential, commercial, and 

economic damage from Sandy could exceed over $50 billion6, which would make it the secondcostliest Atlantic hurricane behind only Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Additional windstorms, such as straight-line derechos and other severe and fast-moving

thunderstorm complexes, have also caused extensive damage throughout the United States

during the fiscal period. On June 29 - 30, 2012, an intense derecho tracked across a large section 

of the Ohio Valley in the Midwestern U.S. and into the mid-Atlantic region resulting in 22 

deaths, widespread infrastructure damage, and power outages across 11 states and the District of 

Columbia, affecting more than four million people.

7

The storm prompted the issuance of four 

separate severe thunderstorm watches by the NOAA Storm Prediction Center (SPC), and damage 

was widespread along the entire path of the derecho – especially in northern Indiana and the Fort 

Wayne, Indiana metro area; central and western Ohio; northeastern Kentucky; southwestern 

Pennsylvania; West Virginia; northern, central, and southwestern Virginia; Maryland;

Washington, D.C.; Delaware; and southern New Jersey.

Today, windstorm impacts of increasing frequency and intensity pose a grave threat to the safety 

and security of our citizens and our communities. Improved prediction and forecasting of 

windstorms is essential, but additional observations, models, and tools are also needed to 

advance the understanding of how the built environment and structural design responds within 

windstorm events. Often overlooked, efficient warning systems and social analysis are critically 

needed to improve warning response, mitigate user complacency, better support effective 

decision making, and reduce the losses associated with devastating windstorms. To help meet 

these and related issues, the NWIRP agencies, academia, and the private sector will build on past 

activities to identify and prioritize specific measurement science research and development needs 

for windstorm impact reduction.

3. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES AND AGENCY ROLES

The NWIRP was established by Public Law 108-360, Title II, which is known as the National 

Windstorm Impact Reduction Act (NWIRA) of 2004. This legislation called for the Director of 

the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to establish an interagency working group, 

and charged that working group with developing and transmitting to Congress:

1) an implementation plan for achieving the objectives of the program; and

 

5 NOAA/NWS, Busy 2012 hurricane season continues decades-long high activity era in the Atlantic, 

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2012/20121129_hurricaneseasonwrapup.html

6 Williams Walsh, M., Schwartz, N.D., Estimate of Economic Losses Now Up to $50 Billion, New York Times, 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/business/estimate-of-economic-losses-now-up-to-50-billion.html?_r=0, 

November 2012

7 Report from DOE Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Infrastructure Security and Energy 

Restoration Division: A Review of Power Outages and Restoration Following the June 2012 Derecho, 

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Derecho%202012_%20Review_0.pdf, August 2012
8

2) a biennial report describing the status of the program and progress achieved. 

Following passage of the NWIRA and within the structure of the National Science and 

Technology Council (NSTC), OSTP established an interagency working group of the Committee 

on Environment, Natural Resources, and Sustainability’s Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction

(SDR), in accordance with the law, consisting of the National Institute of Standards and 

Technology (NIST), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and 

Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 

and, at the Director’s discretion, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to coordinate 

activities in furtherance of the program’s objectives. Although the NWIRA officially expired in 

October 2007 and has yet to be reauthorized by Congress, these agencies continue to pursue

measurable reductions in losses of life and property from windstorms per the original legislation.

As an initial step, the working group developed the Windstorm Impact Reduction Implementation 

Plan, which was sent to the Congress on April 5, 2006. The plan identified research activities 

needed to improve windstorm hazard mitigation and served as a guide for Federal agencies to 

coordinate new and existing research to fill knowledge gaps in understanding, predicting, and 

forecasting windstorms. Building on that plan in a subsequent and related effort, and as part of a 

broader undertaking by the NSTC and SDR to identify and prioritize the Federal investments in 

science and technology needed to reduce future disaster losses, the NWIRP agencies contributed 

expertise to the development of a series of 15 implementation plans, which, in addition to 

addressing other hazards, articulated necessary steps for reducing windstorm impacts. This series 

includes plans that prescribe specific actions for mitigating impacts of hurricane and tornado 

hazards, as well as the coastal inundation and flood hazards which hurricanes and other 

windstorms often produce. Published in 2008, these plans – the Grand Challenges for Disaster 

Reduction Implementation Plans for Hurricane, Tornado, Coastal Inundation, and Flood – are 

also available online at the SDR website at http://www.sdr.gov/.

This document is the biennial report for Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012 – the reports for Fiscal 

Years 2009 and 2010 and Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008 are included in this report’s appendix. 

The present report provides examples of relevant Federal activities undertaken by the 

abovementioned agencies during the fiscal period. The examples herein reflect instances of 

collaboration and cooperation across levels of government, among Federal agencies, and with 

academia and the private sector. 

The sections of this report are organized in thematic sections according to the goals of: improved 

understanding of windstorms; impact assessment and reduction; and outreach. Within these 

sections, the report summarizes activities undertaken by:

 NIST, in support of research and development to improve codes, standards, and practices 

for design and construction of buildings, structures, and lifelines.8

 

8 The term ‘lifelines’ means public works and utilities, including transportation facilities and infrastructure, oil and 

gas pipelines, electrical power and communication facilities and infrastructure, and water supply and sewage 

treatment facilities.
9

 NSF, in support of research in engineering, atmospheric sciences, and social sciences to 

improve understanding of the behavior of windstorms and their impact on buildings, 

structures, lifelines, and society.

 NOAA, in support of atmospheric sciences research to improve the understanding of the 

behavior of windstorms and their impact on buildings, structures, and lifelines.

 FEMA, in support of the development of risk assessment tools and effective mitigation 

techniques, windstorm-related data collection and analysis, public outreach, information 

dissemination, and implementation of mitigation measures consistent with the agency’s 

all-hazards approach.

 FHWA, in support of research to improve the understanding of windstorm impacts on 

bridges and other highway structures to advance corresponding design, engineering, and 

construction standards.

4. PROGRESS IN FISCAL YEARS 2011 AND 2012

4.1 UNDERSTANDING WINDSTORMS FOR IMPROVED PREDICTIONS, 

FORECASTS, AND WARNINGS

Federal efforts to understand, predict, and forecast windstorms span a broad array of activities, 

from basic research funded by the NSF and other agencies to severe weather warnings provided 

by NOAA. During Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, NSF and NOAA supported research to advance 

the understanding of the physical processes that determine hurricane intensity, tornadogenesis, 

tornadic vortex structure, and other weather phenomena. NOAA activities included research to 

improve observations of physical phenomena; development of novel data assimilation and 

forecasting techniques; and applications of observations, models, and forecasts.

4.1.1 Hurricanes

Through advances in satellite‐based observations, supercomputers, and modeling, tremendous 

strides over recent decades have reduced average hurricane forecast track errors significantly. 

They are now about half as large as what they were 15 years ago.9 Much of this progress is the 

result of advances in numerical weather prediction: that is, the use of computer models to 

extrapolate future weather based on current conditions and knowledge of atmospheric dynamics. 

Further advances in hurricane modeling will require the development of models that can 

accurately depict large-scale atmospheric flows (which are primarily responsible for steering 

hurricanes), while at the same time representing the finer-scale details of their inner cores, which

influence hurricane intensity. 

Prediction of hurricane formation and intensification remains one of the most challenging aspects 

of atmospheric science. Efforts during the past decade have only yielded slight improvements in 

this area. Moreover, while statistical-dynamical models have provided the most accurate 

guidance for intensity prediction in recent years, experts at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center 

(NHC) project that limitations inherent to these joint models will likely restrict the ability to 

 

9 NOAA/NHC, NHC Tropical Cyclone Forecast Verification, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/verify5.shtml
10

derive further skill improvements from them to a range of 10 to 20 percent. Improvement beyond 

this ceiling must come from other applications. Within this context, high-resolution atmospheric 

modeling systems based on dynamical and ensemble approaches offer the best hope for 

significantly improving intensity forecasts.10 Future progress in hurricane forecasting will 

depend upon the success of programs such as NOAA’s Hurricane Forecast Improvement 

Program (HFIP) and others highlighted in the following section. 

NOAA: Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program. The HFIP provides the basis for NOAA 

and other agencies to coordinate and align Federal research with that of the larger scientific 

community. The specific goals of the HFIP are to reduce the average errors of hurricane track 

and intensity forecasts by 20 percent within five years and 50 percent in approximately 10 years 

while extending the forecast period out to seven days with accuracy equal to today's five-day 

forecast.

11 NOAA is making significant progress toward meeting these goals. In Fiscal years 

2011 and 2012, HFIP provided funding to numerous efforts within NOAA, other Federal

agencies, and universities to support the development, testing, and evaluation of enhanced 

numerical prediction systems. Successful demonstration of the systems illustrated that the fiveyear track forecast goals should be achieved through the use of recently developed data 

assimilation systems and existing operational global models when run as an ensemble at 30 km 

resolution. The initial operational version of this new data assimilation was implemented within 

the National Weather Service (NWS) in May 2012. Preliminary results showed that the intensityforecasting goals can be achieved using inner core data from Doppler radar data transmitted to 

the ground in real-time from NOAA research aircraft, advanced data assimilation systems, and 

regional models run at high resolution (3 km). Other notable successes under the program 

include the rapid deployment of models from research application to operational application and 

the development and testing of HFIP’s Real-time Experimental Forecast System, which uses

NOAA Research and Development High Performance Computing with real-time support to the 

NHC during the hurricane season. This system allowed the demonstration of advances in model 

guidance for which additional operational computing is needed in order to implement.

NOAA: Joint Hurricane Testbed. During Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, the U.S. Weather 

Research Program within the NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)

Office of Weather and Air Quality supported 11 projects conducted at the Joint Hurricane 

Testbed (JHT) in Miami, Florida, a NOAA testbed jointly managed by NHC and the NOAA's 

Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML)12. These projects involved 

joint testing of new techniques, applications, and model enhancements to improve the analysis 

and prediction of tropical cyclones. The JHT is designed to transfer more rapidly and smoothly 

new technology, research results, and observational advances by partnering researchers from the 

academic community, federal agencies, and other groups with hurricane forecasters at the NHC 

throughout the entire project.

 

10 NOAA/NHC, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/outreach/presentations/2011_IntensityForecastingImprovement_Pasch.pdf

11 Gall, R., Franklin, J., Marks, F., Rappaport, E.N., and Toepfer, F., 2012: The Hurricane Forecast Improvement 

Project. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, in press. Early online release 

http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00071.1

12 Rappaport, E., J-G Jiing, C.W. Landsea, S. T. Murillo, and J.L. Franklin, 2012: The Joint Hurricane Test Bed: It's 

First Decade of Tropical Cyclone Research Research-to-Operations Activities Reviewed. Bulletin of the American 

Meteorological Society, 93, pp. 371-380.
11

NOAA/NSF/NASA: NOAA Intensity Forecasting Experiment. NOAA's HRD is in the midst 

of a multi-year experiment to improve hurricane-intensity forecasting. Developed in partnership 

with other parts of NOAA, the Intensity Forecasting Experiment (IFEX) is: collecting 

observations that span the tropical cyclone (TC) life cycle in a variety of environments for 

improvements in the initialization and evaluation of the next-generation Hurricane Weather 

Research and Forecasting operational model; developing and refining measurement strategies 

and technologies that provide improved real-time monitoring of TC intensity, structure, and 

environment; and improving the understanding of physical processes important to intensity 

change for a TC at all stages of its life cycle. Measurable progress is occurring in TC intensity 

forecasts as a result of these efforts, though much work remains. When possible, IFEX partners 

with other agencies to accomplish a more complete sampling of TC structure and intensity. For 

example, during Fiscal Year 2010, IFEX partnered with NSF for the PRE-Depression 

Investigation of Cloud-Systems in the Tropics (PREDICT) and the National Aeronautics and 

Space Administration (NASA) on Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) in a triagency collaborative and coordinated study of the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic basin. 

In combination, these agencies deployed multiple aircraft over a 45-day period during the peak 

of the Atlantic hurricane season to gather robust and complementary data sets. One of the 

noteworthy aspects of this collaboration was the use of NASA's remotely piloted Global Hawk 

scientific research drone in a hurricane research capacity. It is particularly significant that the 

drone’s 24-hour flight time gave scientists the ability to directly observe Hurricane Karl as it 

changed over time in a way that conventional planes and satellites had not done before. In 

addition to demonstrating new skill in identifying those long-traveling Atlantic basin 

disturbances that ultimately deepen to form tropical depressions capable of fostering hurricane 

genesis, PREDICT and GRIP scientists have shed light on the processes tied to winds surging 

from the South American continent that ultimately played a key role in the genesis of Karl. 

These innovative interactions continued during Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, with IFEX 

partnering with NASA during their Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel experiment to utilize

two Global Hawk drones for hurricane observation.

13

NOAA: In situ Measurements of Turbulence in Hurricanes – Extreme Turbulence Probe. 

For a number of years as part of NOAA’s ongoing effort to improve forecasting of rapid changes 

in hurricane intensity, the agency has been developing a pressure-sphere anemometer – known as 

the Extreme Turbulence Probe – for measuring turbulence and flux within hurricanes. Since 

2009, NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory has received funding through the HFIP to deploy these 

probes on offshore platforms to measure air-sea exchange in hurricane conditions. Funding for 

onshore deployment of the probes in Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012 allows for measurements when

hurricanes make landfall. Data from the probes are being used to better understand wind loading 

on structures. The wind energy industry has also expressed interest in such measurements as a 

means to better understand the impacts of hurricanes on near-shore wind farms.

4.1.2 Tornadoes, Thunderstorms, and Other Severe Weather

 

13 Murillo, S. Summary of NOAA’s 2011 Hurricane Field Program. Available at: 

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/.../NOAA-Hurr-Conf-IFEX2011-Murillo.ppt
12

Tornadoes and other severe weather such as thunderstorms also continue to claim lives and cause 

damage in the United States on an annual basis. Historic tornado events such as the tornado that 

ravaged Alabama in April 2011 and the largest tornado ever recorded which struck El Reno, 

Oklahoma in May 2013 during Fiscal Year 2013 cause havoc and terrorize communities. In June 

2012, a derecho straight-line windstorm moved through the Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic 

regions producing widespread, significant wind damage and the highest recorded June or July 

wind gusts at several official observing sites along its path, including: Fort Wayne, Indiana;

Zanesville, Ohio; and Huntington, West Virginia.14 The storm struck nearly every metropolitan 

area in a wide path that extended from Chicago, Illinois and Indianapolis, Indiana to Baltimore, 

Maryland and Washington, District of Columbia. More than four million people lost power and 

22 were killed.15

Investments over the last two decades have led to advances in the understanding of 

tornadogenesis and improvements in windstorm prediction and have enabled NWS to double the 

average lead time for tornado warnings to 13 minutes16. Yet, even with the application of bestavailable science, the rate at which warnings result in false alarms remains high, at 70 percent17

.

To reduce this rate and further increase warning lead times for devastating windstorms such as 

tornadoes and the June 2012 derechos mentioned above, the Federal agencies conducted an array 

of focused efforts during the fiscal period. Examples of agency efforts related to tornadoes, 

thunderstorms, and other severe weather follow below.

NOAA: Warn-On-Forecast. NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) is working 

with the NWS to develop a new vision for the warning decision process, which continues to 

evolve as scientists and engineers work toward integrating the next generation radar (e.g., rapid 

scanning phased array radar and very rapid-scanning radar with data in < 1 minute) and stormscale numerical models to create a storm-scale prediction capability for the NWS. The NSSL 

will continue to investigate various model parameterization schemes, along with techniques to 

improve model initialization through three- and four-dimensional data assimilation. Beginning in 

Fiscal Year 2010 and continuing through this reporting period, the NSSL received funding to 

support the Warn-on-Forecast (WoF) program. Within the next decade, the NSSL envisions 

operational units evaluating a Warn-on-Forecast methodology, allowing forecasters to use 

thunderstorm-resolving computer models to guide severe weather warnings for tornadoes, winds, 

hail, and flash floods in the same way they do today with the current Doppler radar systems. In 

conjunction with the WoF program, NSSL is also demonstrating the capabilities of the Multifunction Phased Array Radar (MPAR), a program funded through NOAA Office of Oceanic and 

Atmospheric Research to NSSL with large technical contributions from industry and 

academia. The MPAR project was established to demonstrate the potential to simultaneously 

perform aircraft tracking, wind profiling, and weather surveillance with a single, phased array 

 

14 NOAA/SPC, The Ohio Valley/Mid-Atlantic Derecho of June 2012, 

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/casepages/jun292012page.htm#

15 NOAA/SPC, The Ohio Valley/Mid-Atlantic Derecho of June 2012, 

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/casepages/jun292012page.htm#

16 NOAA, Tornadoes 101: Stay alert and stay alive, 

http://www.noaa.gov/features/03_protecting/tornadoes101c.html

17 From VORTEX2 website: http://www.vortex2.org/home/
13

weather radar.18 NOAA's National Weather Radar Testbed is a phased array radar actively being 

tested and evaluated in Norman, Oklahoma. Evidence suggests that these enhancements to 

operational weather capabilities will lead to a more accurate warning system, increase lead time, 

and provide probabilistic information to the public to support risk-wise actions during severe 

weather events. The WoF program is being conducted in collaboration with the NOAA Earth 

Systems Research Laboratory Global Systems Division (ESRL/GSD), the NWS SPC, and the 

NWS Forecast Office in Norman, Oklahoma.

NOAA/NSF: Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2. In Fiscal 

Years 2009 and 2010, the NSF and NOAA jointly supported the Verification of the Origins of 

Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 (VORTEX2), which was the largest and most ambitious 

tornado field study conducted to date. This $14 million effort involved nearly 100 scientists and 

students from 16 American universities and academic organizations; forecasters from 

NOAA/NWS and the NWS SPC; and Environment Canada, the Australian Bureau of 

Meteorology, and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The VORTEX2 teams sought to better 

understand how, when, and why tornadoes form. Specifically, they investigated the wind, 

temperature, and humidity conditions that result in the development of tornadoes within 

thunderstorms; the detailed structure of tornadic winds and their relationship to localized damage 

patterns; and the relationships between tornadoes, their parent thunderstorms, and the largerscale environment. Further analysis in Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012 of these and other data from 

the two-year VORTEX2 experiment is advancing the understanding of tornado formation, 

improving prediction, and offering prospects for increased warning times. Ongoing analyses are 

pointing to a complex interplay of previously-recognized broad storm-scale rotation and far more 

subtle processes hinging on the detailed makeup and evaporative potential of precipitation 

particles within the rear-flank regions of supercell thunderstorms in triggering (or in some cases, 

apparently blocking) the spin-up of intense near-surface rotation on the tornado scale.

NSF: Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. The Center for 

Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), an NSF-funded Engineering 

Research Center led by the University of Massachusetts, seeks to increase the warning times and 

forecast accuracy for tornadoes and other severe weather. During the fiscal period, a CASA data 

stream was integrated into NOAA’s Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) 

with the assistance of researchers from the NSSL, allowing for the display of real-time data from 

the Integrated Project 1 Systems Test Bed (located in southwestern Oklahoma) to be accessed by 

NWS forecasters, warning coordination meteorologists, and other key personnel who assist in 

storm evaluation, local warning issuance, and siren activation. The CASA radar data were also

accessed by emergency management personnel, both at operational centers and in the field via 

wireless communications technologies, to facilitate improved neighborhood-level response to 

severe weather events impacting the testbed region. During Fiscal Year 2012, arrangements were 

solidified in collaboration with the NOAA/NWS Office of Science and Technology, the DallasFort Worth NWS Forecast Office, and North Central Texas Council of Governments and its 

member municipalities to relocate CASA testbed operations to the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas 

metropolitan region, which will allow for a more intensive evaluation of system performance and 

emergency management user integration in a major urban area and transportation hub. An initial 

 

18 From MPAR website: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/tools/radar/mpar/
14

four-radar network is set to begin full operation in 2013 and plans call for four additional sites to

be added to extend coverage to the zone east of Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas soon thereafter.

NOAA: Hazardous Weather Testbed. During Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, NOAA’s NSSL, 

NWS SPC, and NWS Forecast Office in Norman, Oklahoma, continued joint testing of new 

techniques and applications for enhancing forecasts and warnings of hazardous weather, 

particularly thunderstorms and their attendant damaging winds, hail, and tornadoes. This project 

– the Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) – is designed to accelerate the transition of promising 

new meteorological insights and technologies into advances in forecasting and warning for 

hazardous mesoscale weather events throughout the United States. The testbed project includes 

the University of Oklahoma’s Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms and the 

NOAA/NASA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite – R Series (GOES-R) Proving 

Ground as core partners for numerical prediction and satellite observations, respectively. Several 

collaborative experiments like GOES-R are conducted within the HWT each year, often 

involving multiple external partners such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research, other 

universities, and various NOAA agencies.

NOAA: Severe Hazards Analysis and Verification Experiment. Within the fiscal period, 

NOAA’s NSSL collected high-resolution severe weather reports as part of the Severe Hazards 

Analysis and Verification Experiment (SHAVE). The primary goal of the SHAVE program 

during this initial period has been to blend high-resolution radar data with geographic 

information system (GIS) data to obtain detailed verification of automated, radar-based hail 

algorithms as well as algorithms related to wind damage and flash flooding. SHAVE further 

expanded in Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012 to include lightning and severe winter weather. The 

algorithms are validated based on severe weather reports obtained through the NWS’s 

verification process. The high spatial and temporal resolution of the GIS datasets collected by 

this project will facilitate the development of decision-making tools that improve forecasts and 

warnings of severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and winter weather and pave the way for 

improvements to the historical severe storms database.

NOAA: Toward Seasonal Prediction and Long-term Severe Weather Variability in a 

Changing Climate. In Fiscal Year 2012, the NWS SPC partnered with the NWS Climate 

Prediction Center, academia, and the NOAA NSSL to work toward an improved understanding 

of the links between large-scale climate variability and windstorm and tornado activity. The 

NWS SPC maintains the long-term observational record of severe weather in the United States, 

and a result of initial interactions occurring in Fiscal Year 2012, a NOAA “State-of-the-Science 

Fact Sheet” titled Tornado Activity and Climate Variability and Change was created. This 

publication has been accepted pending revisions and will be highlighted by NOAA in Fiscal 

Year 2013. The SPC has also recently collaborated with scientists from the International 

Research Institute, at the Earth Observatory at Lamont-Doherty Laboratory, Columbia 

University to test the viability of using climate forecasting models in detecting seasonal severeweather trends.19 This ongoing research shows promise and may contribute to extending 

 

19 Representative publication: Tippett, M.K., Sobel, A.H., and Camargo, S.J., 2012: Association of U.S. tornado 

occurrence with monthly environmental parameters. Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L02801, doi:10.1029/2011GL050368
15

NOAA’s forecasts for damaging windstorm and tornado episodes and to developing longer-lead 

risk assessments that vary as a function of climate change.

NSF: Development of SPA-10 Storm Penetrating Aircraft. Through cooperation with several 

branches of the Department of Defense in Fiscal Year 2012, NSF obtained access to a previously 

mothballed A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft. This platform will be suitably modified (e.g., to include 

improved de-icing capabilities) and instrumented to obtain in-storm measurements in a variety of 

weather systems, including high-wind producing thunderstorms. Once readied for use, the 

platform will be housed and operated for NSF by the U.S. Navy’s Center for Interdisciplinary 

Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Studies in Monterey, California. The storm-penetrating A-10 (SPA10) replaces a smaller, single-engine propeller-driven T-28 aircraft that was previously supported 

by NSF but retired in 2005, and will bring greatly enhanced capabilities for direct meteorological 

sampling in a variety of hazardous weather environments. In particular, the A-10’s high-altitude 

capabilities (an operational ceiling approaching 40,000 ft (~12 km) mean sea level) will allow 

researchers to directly observe various aspects of internal storm structure and associated 

dynamics as well as to evaluate model-based forecasts of these storms. The A-10’s 

comparatively low stall speed is ideal for detailed sampling of in-storm cloud and precipitation 

microphysics involved in energy release and evaporative processes pivotal to generation of high 

thunderstorm winds ultimately reaching the surface. The SPA-10 is currently undergoing 

refurbishment and installation of specialized meteorological instrumentation and is expected to 

begin limited flight testing in the spring of 2015.

4.2 ASSESSING AND REDUCING WINDSTORM IMPACTS

Federal efforts to assess and reduce the impacts of windstorms cover a wide range of activities, 

including: studying the performance of buildings, structures, and infrastructure during and after 

windstorms; research, development, and technology transfer of windstorm modeling, simulation, 

risk assessment, and loss estimation techniques; development of cost effective windstormresistant materials and systems; and information dissemination and outreach to a wide range of 

stakeholders in the engineering and construction industries, government, and the general public 

(see Section 4.3 for additional information on outreach activities).

During Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, NSF and NOAA supported research in areas of simulation 

of hurricane and tornado wind fields and the understanding of tornado, hurricane, and winddriven rain effects on buildings. NIST activities included development of improved tools for 

estimating wind hazards and combined hurricane wind, storm surge, and wave hazards, and 

estimation of wind loads on structures. NIST and FEMA conducted post-windstorm studies, and 

results of such prior and current studies led to changes in building codes to improve windstorm 

resistance. NOAA and FEMA supported the continued development of hurricane loss estimation 

models. FHWA activities included real-time monitoring of weather conditions and bridge 

response to winds and physical and computational modeling of wind effects on highway 

structures. NSF also supported research related to resilience to natural hazards.

4.2.1 Buildings and Structures

NIST: Wind Engineering. NIST’s wind engineering research is focused on developing the 

measurement science, tools, and methodologies necessary to substantially improve: (1) wind 
16

hazard estimation through better extreme wind databases and maps; (2) the estimation of wind 

loads on structures, through the development of database-assisted design techniques 

incorporating wind directionality effects and prediction of structural responses to these loads; 

and (3) science-based methodologies for aerodynamic simulation and measurements, for 

determination of wind loads on buildings and structures. Progress in wind-hazard estimation 

during Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012 saw the completion of the new United States extreme-wind 

database, including validation of historical data, standardization of wind data to uniform height 

(10 m) and terrain (flat, open), and separation of extreme-wind speed records by storm type 

(tropical, thunderstorm, other).20 Also in Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, NIST: (1) commenced the 

development of design wind speed maps based on the new extreme wind database, intended for 

submission to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Standard on Minimum Design 

Loads for Buildings and Other Structures (ASCE 7); and (2) finished work on a multi-year effort 

to develop database-assisted design tools to improve the estimation of wind loads and structural 

responses, with software completed for wind design of high-rise reinforced concrete buildings.21

The software is available online, along with the previously completed software tools for wind 

design of high-rise steel frame buildings and for low-rise buildings, at http://www.nist.gov/wind. 

Additionally, NIST initiated new research during Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012 to develop 

science-based methodologies for aerodynamic simulation and measurements, investigating a 

novel approach to atmospheric turbulence modeling that could potentially help simplify and 

improve standardization of both wind tunnel and computational wind engineering methods for 

determining wind loads.22

FEMA: Improving Wind-Resistant Provisions. During the fiscal period, FEMA continued to 

work with its partners to develop and incorporate high-wind-resistant provisions and 

requirements in the Nation’s model building codes and standards. Working with other Federal

agencies, state and local governments, building regulators, building industry groups, and other 

entities, FEMA advocated for specific changes to increase wind-resistant requirements of the 

following building and structural codes: International Building Code (IBC), International 

Residential Code (IRC), International Code Council Storm Shelter Standard (ICC-500) and High 

Wind Standard (ICC-600), and other industry regulations such as ASCE 7. As a result of these 

efforts, buildings are being built stronger, reducing the risks of death, injury, and property loss 

from high-wind storms.

NSF: Hurricane Wind and Wind-Driven Rain Impact on Buildings. Windstorms of 

hurricane-force cause a large amount of damage by high winds and wind-driven rain. Even when 

visible damage is not evident, the interior of houses and small commercial buildings can sustain 

large amounts of economic losses due to wind-driven rain. During the fiscal period, NSF 

awarded three grants – one each to the University of Florida, Louisiana State University, and 

Florida International University – to investigate the problem of wind and wind-driven rain 

 

20 Representative publication: Lombardo, F.T., Improved extreme wind speed estimation for wind engineering 

applications, Journal of Wind Engineering & Industrial Aerodynamics, Volumes 104–106, May–July 2012, pages 

278-284

21 Representative publication: Yeo, D. and Simiu, E., High-Rise Reinforced Concrete Structures: Database-Assisted 

Design for Wind, J. Struct. Eng., Vol. 137, No. 11, Nov. 2011, 1340-1340

22 Representative publication: Yeo, D. and Chowdhury, A.G., A Simplified Wind Flow Model for the Estimation of 

Aerodynamic Effects on Small Structures, Journal of Engineering Mechanics-ASCE, in press
17

damage and to develop cost-effective mitigation measures. The three institutions have the goal of 

educating young professionals to be knowledgeable in building-design improvements that protect 

against high wind and wind-driven rain.

NSF: Tornado Impact on Residential Structures. In Fiscal Year 2011, the U.S. experienced 

many tornadoes that caused large amounts of destruction and numerous fatalities. An NSF grant 

was awarded to the University of Florida to document and assess the severity of damages caused 

in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Joplin, Missouri. In addition, a Young Investigator Career grant was 

awarded for an extended period (generally five years) to pursue research beyond the current 

practice with the hopes of discovering innovative approaches to mitigate damage to residential 

and commercial buildings during tornadoes. Potential use of new material, connections, 

construction methods, and other possible avenues resulting from this research can lead to more 

cost-effective construction and reduce damages from tornadoes.23

NOAA: Reducing Wind-Induced Damages. During the fiscal period, and with funding from 

NOAA, Iowa State University collected wind data in the vicinity of tornadoes for verification 

and calibration of a wind simulation and testing simulator. Additional tasks undertaken by Iowa 

State include: 

 Working to simulate hurricane winds around built structures;

 Modeling tornadic winds near a “rough” surface in a tornado simulator;

 Simulating straight-wind and tornado flow fields in and around different types and 

configurations of buildings and vegetative barriers;

 Assessing wind damage potential of buildings as a function of distribution of local wind 

speed and wind-borne debris impacts;

 Studying the optimum shelterbelt configuration to reduce hurricane wind hazard to cities 

along coastal areas; and

 Investigating a new aerodynamic shape of an extreme-wind-resistant residential 

building.24

NIST: Combined Hurricane Storm Surge, Wind, and Wave Modeling. NIST’s research on 

storm surge is aimed at providing a science-based methodology for accurate characterization of 

the risks associated with combined hurricane hazards, including hurricane wind, storm surge, and 

waves. The methodology will provide: (1) estimation of design risk associated with 

combinations of hurricane wind speeds and storm surge heights, with appropriate accounting for 

site dependency (i.e., the effects of local topography and bathymetry on which storm surge at any 

specific location is highly dependent); and (2) consideration of the effects of waves, which add to 

total inundation. During Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, NIST completed development of the 

 

23 Representative publication: Prevatt, D.O., Van de Lindt, J.W., Back, E., Graettinger, A.J., Pei, S., Coulbourne, 

W., Gupta, R., James, D., Agdas, D., Making the Case for Improved Structural Design: The Tornado Outbreaks of 

2011, ASCE Journal of Leadership and Management in Engineering, Accepted (2012).

24 Representative publication: Karstens, C.D. and Gallus, Jr., W.A. (2008), Simulations of near-ground hurricane 

winds influenced by built structures, Extended Abstracts, 28th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, 

Orlando, Florida: Amer. Meteor. Soc.

Also: Sengupta, A., Haan, F.L., Sarkar, P.P., and Balaramudu, V. (2008), Transient loads on buildings in microburst 

and tornado winds, J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerodyn, dio:10.1016/j.jweia.2008.02.050
18

methodology for accounting for the effects of waves on total storm surge inundation,

25 which 

was used for a pilot study on wave effects for the Tampa Bay, Florida area during the fiscal 

period.

FEMA: Mitigation Assessment Team Evaluations Following Major Hurricanes, Tornadoes 

and Windstorms. In Fiscal Year 2011, a FEMA Mitigation Assessment Team (MAT) responded 

to the April tornadoes in the southeastern United States and the May 22 tornado that struck 

Joplin, Missouri. FEMA deployed a MAT to investigate the damage and provide technical 

assistance to the affected communities through the Joint Field Offices established in response to 

these events. Examples of some of the products conceived as a result of recent studies include 

eight new Recovery Advisories (RA) from the tornado MATs for Alabama, Mississippi, 

Tennessee, Georgia, and the Joplin, Missouri tornado outbreaks:

 RA1 – Tornado Risks and Hazards in the Southeastern United States;

 RA2 – Safe Rooms: Selecting Design Criteria;

 RA3 – Residential Sheltering: In-Residence and Stand-Alone Safe Rooms;

 RA4 – Safe Rooms and Refuge Areas in the Home;

 RA5 – Critical Facilities Located in Tornado-Prone Regions: Recommendations for 

Facility Owners;

 RA6 – Critical Facilities Located in Tornado-Prone Regions: Recommendations for 

Architects and Engineers;

 RA7 – Rebuilding and Repairing Your Home after a Tornado; and 

 RA8 – Reconstructing Non-Residential Buildings after a Tornado.

The FEMA MAT investigated the performance of residential buildings, commercial and 

industrial buildings, critical and essential facilities, and infrastructure as well as safe rooms, 

storm shelters, hardened areas, and tornado refuge areas. Additionally, the MAT rated building 

damage according to the Enhanced Fujita (EF) tornado scale to assess wind speeds exerted on 

affected buildings and developed conclusions and recommendations based on their assessments. 

The final MAT report (FEMA P-908: Mitigation Assessment Team Report – Spring 2011 

Tornadoes: April 25-28 and May 22; Building Performance Observations, Recommendations, 

and Technical Guidance) was released in Fiscal Year 2012 and presents field observations and 

conclusions, which include:

 Propose changing IBC code to require all new elementary, middle, and high schools with 

50 or more occupants and all new 911 call stations, emergency operation centers, and 

fire, rescue, ambulance, and police stations to have a FEMA P-361: Design and 

Construction Guidance for Community Safe Rooms-compliant safe room or an ICC-500-

compliant storm shelter in areas where the shelter design wind speed for tornadoes is 250 

mph;

 Adopt and enforce current model building codes;

 Increase emphasis on code compliance;

 

25 Representative publication: Phan, L.T. and Simiu, E.; Estimation of risk for design of structures exposed to 

combined effects of hurricane wind speed and storm surge hazards, ICASP11, Applications of Statistics and 

Probability in Civil Engineering, Faber, Köhler, and Nishijima (eds), 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 

978-0-415-66986-3
19

 Maintain and rigorously enforce the adopted model building code since amendments or 

lax enforcement practices may weaken the continuous load path of the building; and 

 Implement voluntary best practices to mitigate damage to one- and two family residential 

buildings.

For Fiscal Year 2013, FEMA is also performing a MAT study on the Hurricane Sandy disaster, 

due for public release in September 2013.

NIST: Study of the Dallas Cowboys Indoor Practice Facility Collapse. Following the 

collapse of the Dallas Cowboys indoor practice facility during a thunderstorm on May 2, 2009, 

NIST conducted a study in collaboration with NOAA’s NSSL to determine how and why the 

facility collapsed. The facility was a fabric-covered, tubular, steel-frame structure, a design often 

used for sports facilities, industrial and agricultural facilities, casinos, military installations, and 

aircraft hangars. The final report,

26 which was completed in Fiscal Year 2010, included 

recommendations for improving the safety of these structures. During Fiscal Years 2011 and 

2012, NIST worked with the ASCE to develop code change proposals. Two code changes, 

responsive to NIST’s recommendation, were adopted by the ICC for the 2015 IBC.

NIST: Technical Investigation of the Joplin Tornado. Following the May 22, 2011 tornado 

that devastated the city of Joplin, Missouri, NIST sent four engineers to the area from May 24 

through May 28 to conduct preliminary reconnaissance. Based on analysis of the data collected 

and other criteria required by law and regulation, the NIST Director established a team under the 

National Construction Safety Team (NCST) Act on June 29, 2011 to proceed with a more 

comprehensive study of the impacts of the disaster. The NCST study is ongoing during the fiscal 

period, and the team includes staff from NIST and NOAA. The primary objectives of the Joplin 

tornado study27 are to:

 Determine the tornado hazard characteristics and associated wind fields in the context of 

historical data;

 Determine the pattern, location, and cause of fatalities and injuries and associated 

performance of emergency communications systems and public response;

 Determine the response of residential, commercial, and critical buildings, including the 

performance of designated safe areas;

 Determine the performance of lifelines as it relates to the continuity of operations of 

residential, commercial, and critical buildings; and

 Identify areas in current building, fire, and emergency communications codes, standards, 

and practices that warrant revision.

FHWA/NIST/NOAA/NSF: U.S.-Japan Panel on Wind and Seismic Effects. FHWA, NIST, 

NOAA, and the NSF all participate on the U.S.-Japan Panel on Wind and Seismic Effects. NIST 

 

26 Gross, J.L., Main, J.A., Phan, L.T., Sadek, F.H., Cauffman, S.A., and Jorgensen, D.P., Final Report on the 

Collapse of the Dallas Cowboys Indoor Practice Facility, May 2, 2009. NISTIR 7661, National Institute of 

Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland, January 2010

27 Levitan, M.L., Phan, L.T., Kuligowsli, E.D., Lombardo, F.T., and Jorgensen, D.P., Investigation Plan, National 

Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Technical Investigation of the Joplin, Missouri, Tornado of May 

22, 2011, NIST Special Publication 1132, May 2012
20

also chairs and provides a technical secretariat for the panel. The panel serves as a mechanism 

for the exchange of technical data, information, and researchers, as well as the coordination of 

joint research on wind and seismic-related topics of mutual interest to the United States and 

Japan. NIST and FHWA staff participate on the panel and its wind engineering Task Committees 

addressing wind and storm surge hazards, specifically the Task Committee “D” (Wind 

Engineering), Task Committee “G” (Transportation), and Task Committee “H” (Storm Surge 

and Tsunami) groups. The Task Committee “D” group has held five international workshops 

and the Task Committee “G” group has held 28 such workshops. During Fiscal Year 2011, the 

U.S. hosted a side-panel meeting in San Francisco, California. Meetings and workshops were 

hosted by Japan in Tsukuba, Japan, including site visits to areas damaged by coastal inundation 

resulting from the tsunami following the March 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. The U.S. also hosted a 

bridge engineering workshop in Portland, Oregon during Fiscal Year 2012.

NIST: Hurricane-Borne Missiles. During the fiscal period, NIST conducted a study for the 

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to develop the technical basis for a 

potential new regulatory guide that would provide licensees and applicants with guidance that 

the staff of the NRC considers acceptable for use in selecting the design-basis and hurricaneborne missile speeds for the design of nuclear power plants.28

NIST/NSF: R&D Roadmap for Windstorm and Coastal Inundation Impact Reduction. 

NIST and NSF jointly sponsored a two-day workshop in June 2012 to gather input from 

scientists, engineers, and other stakeholders in professional practice, industry, academia, and 

government to support the development of a measurement science R&D roadmap for windstorm 

and coastal inundation impact reduction. Federal Government participants included 

representatives from FEMA, FHWA, HUD, NOAA, OSTP, and USGS, in addition to NIST and 

NSF. The roadmap will be completed in Fiscal Year 2013.

4.2.2 Bridges and Highways

FHWA: Monitoring of Wind Conditions and Structural Performance. During the fiscal 

period, the FHWA Office of Infrastructure Research and Development (HRDI) monitored winds 

and structural performance at selected bridge sites to establish and characterize site-specific wind 

conditions and the responses of the bridges to varying wind conditions. The sites of two major 

long-span, cable-supported bridges were monitored during the reporting period – the Deer IsleSedgwick Bridge (Maine) and the Hale Boggs Bridge (Louisiana). Data was collected on a 

continuous basis; however, few major storm events were observed with the exception of 

Hurricane Isaac in August 2012. The data gathered during this monitoring period provided

valuable information for the calibration of numerical tools and predictive methods; the 

improvement of physical modeling techniques in the laboratory; the evaluation and validation of 

new designs; and the development and assessment of mitigation measures.

FHWA: Full Scale Measurement of Structural Dynamic Properties. In an ongoing program 

to characterize the dynamic properties of bridge stay cables, which are critical to structural 

 

28 Simiu, E. and Potra, F., Technical Basis for Regulatory Guidance on Design-Basis Hurricane-Borne Missile 

Speeds for Nuclear Power Plants, NUREG/CR-7004, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, November 2011
21

performance and aerodynamic stability, the analysis of data from full-scale, forced vibration tests 

on selected major structures continued during Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012. Tests had been 

previously performed on the Zakim (Massachusetts), Emerson (Missouri), and Penobscot 

Narrows (Maine) bridges. Information collected during the tests has enabled further evaluation 

of design details and assessment of the effectiveness of various mitigation measures such as 

dampers, cross ties, and aerodynamic surface treatments. The information also serves as a 

benchmark that will be useful during later inspections to assess the bridge’s structural condition 

and overall health.

FHWA: Physical Modeling of Wind Effects on Highway Structures. A project continued

during the fiscal period under FHWA’s Exploratory Advanced Research (EAR) program to 

develop a new system to perform volumetric particle image velocimetry. This will enable 

detailed flow visualizations during laboratory study of fluid-structure interactions. This new 

technology will be a valuable tool in performing aerodynamic studies of wind effects on highway 

structures as well as for hydraulic issues associated with scour and storm surge. Another project 

underway within the EAR program will develop a system using pressure-sensitive paint and 

surface-stress-sensitive film to measure wind forces on structural models in the laboratory. Two 

small-scale bridge models, fabricated and instrumented with pressure taps in the previous 

reporting period, were tested in the FHWA’s small wind tunnel at the Turner-Fairbank Highway 

Research Center (TFHRC) to evaluate the performance of pressure-sensitive paint and surfacestress-sensitive film as sensing technologies in the laboratory setting. In collaboration with the 

National Research Council of Canada (NRCC) and in cooperation with the University of 

Stavenger in Norway, the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, and the design 

consultancy firm RWDI, wind tunnel tests were performed at NRCC on a full-scale section 

model of a bridge stay cable. Tests were performed in simulated wind conditions over a broad 

range of wind speeds to evaluate the influence of wind speed, turbulence intensity, wind/cable 

orientation, cable roundness, and aerodynamic surface treatment on overall performance and 

aerodynamic stability.29

FHWA: Numerical Modeling of Wind Effects on Highway Structures. During the fiscal 

period, an interagency agreement has continued between the Department of Transportation 

(DOT) and the Department of Energy (DOE) for modeling the effects of natural hazards, such as 

windstorms, hydraulics, and flooding, on infrastructure. This agreement enables FHWA to utilize 

high-performance computing and support staff from the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). 

Resources located at the Transportation Research and Analysis Computing Center (TRACC) are 

being used to model wind effects on highway users as well as highway structures. A detailed 

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model of the FHWA Aerodynamics Laboratory at 

TFHRC, including the large wind tunnel, was developed to evaluate performance of the facility 

and to enhance simulation capability. Special techniques have been developed by ANL staff to 

couple CFD software with computational structural mechanics software to enable study of wind 

and structure interaction problems. These emerging tools were used to develop initial models to 

study the interaction of wind with inclined bridge stay cables as well as wind (or truck-induced 

gust) interaction with large message sign structures. ANL staff has also refined skills with using 

 

29 Larose, G.L., D’Auteuil, A., Wind Tunnel Investigations of an Inclined Stay Cable with a Helical Fillet, LTR-AL2011-0093, National Research Council Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, October 2011
22

moving mesh capabilities of CFD software so that objects, such as trucks, can be moved through 

still air or wind fields to study fluid/structure interaction. These CFD tools were used to study the 

impact of salt spray from trucks, moving either through still air or a wind field, on weathering 

steel girders of highway overpasses. They were also incorporated into the aforementioned study 

on message signs. In another area, finite element modeling, using the commercial program SAP 

2000, was performed to study the efficacy of various approaches for mitigating wind-induced 

vibration of bridge stay cables. A comprehensive laboratory report was submitted for publication 

and should be available early in the next biennial reporting period.30

FHWA: Development of Design Guidelines. Research continued in Fiscal Years 2011 and 

2012 on the issue of wind- and rain-induced vibration of bridge stay cables. The FHWA draft 

guidelines document on the aerodynamic design of bridge stay cables was further updated. 

Following review and approval, the document will provide guidance on the aerodynamic design 

of cables and cable networks on major new highway bridges and for the retrofit of existing 

structures to mitigate wind-induced vibration problems.

4.2.3 Power Grid, Aviation, and U.S. Space Centers

NOAA: High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Model. To improve guidance for air traffic managers

and other windstorm prediction and forecasting applications, NOAA scientists at the ESRL/GSD 

developed and tested a High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) weather forecast model. The 

HRRR is a 3 km research version of the coarser (12 km) resolution Rapid Refresh (RAP) Model, 

which replaced the Rapid Update Cycle model as the NOAA next-generation hourly-updated 

assimilation/modeling system operational at the NOAA National Center for Environmental 

Prediction in May 2012. The HRRR is an hourly-updated, radar-initialized, storm-resolving 

model currently covering the U.S. It is designed to provide air traffic managers with rapidly 

updated projections of developing severe weather and potential windstorms. During the fiscal 

period of 2011 and 2012, NOAA scientists made several breakthroughs, including the 

development of an effective technique for assimilating 3-D radar reflectivity data into the RAP 

Model. 

NOAA: Hazardous Weather System for U.S. Space Centers. Operations at United States 

space centers are heavily dependent on severe weather conditions and windstorm forecasts. 

Safety regulations restrict work on tall gantries, shuttle transport, refueling, and other operations

during high wind events. Winds may also impact safety following rocket blasts, fuel spills, and 

other accidents by carrying toxins from an accident zone farther afield. During the fiscal period, 

NOAA’s ESRL/GSD developed and implemented a state-of-the-art analysis and forecasting 

system supporting the Eastern and Western Ranges as part of the Range Standardization and 

Automation (RSA) program. Due to advances by the RSA program in Fiscal Years 2011 and 

2012, NOAA now can deliver 24-, 12-, and nine-hour forecasts of varying spatial resolutions to 

address space center needs.

 

30 Bosch, H., Park, S., and Shen, J. (Pending), Mitigation of wind-induced vibration of stay cables: numerical 

simulations and evaluations, FHWA Staff Report Number TBD, FHWA/TFHRC, McLean, VA, Date TBD
23

NOAA: Microburst Studies. The NSSL maintained an ongoing program with the Arizonabased Salt River Project (SRP), which provides electricity and water management to the 

Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area, to study and document the impact of severe winds on 

electrical power infrastructure. During SRP field operations, radar is automatically monitored for 

thunderstorms reaching thresholds that could result in outflows producing strong surface winds 

and blowing dust. When thresholds are reached, operational personnel receive an alert to prepare 

for the impact of wind loading on SRP power poles and substations. In a prior fiscal period 

during summer 2008, 140 microburst windstorms were identified in Phoenix and the surrounding 

Sonoran Desert. The Sonoran microbursts were studied and examined for their frequency and 

characteristics, as observed from data collected from three Doppler radars and electrical power 

infrastructure damage reports. Stronger maximum differential wind velocities were observed 

more frequently in the Sonoran microbursts than in many previously documented microbursts. 

Further comparison analysis conducted in Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012 of the Doppler radar data 

to the wind damage reports found that the microburst winds caused more significant damage to 

electrical power infrastructure than gust-front winds.

NOAA/NSF: Reliability-Based Hurricane Risk Assessment for Offshore Wind Farms. 

Meeting the national goal of generating 20 percent of total energy needs from renewable source 

by 2030 will require placing wind farms offshore. These wind farms located on the Gulf and 

East coasts are vulnerable to hurricanes, and in order to make offshore wind farms viable 

economically, it is necessary to have knowledge of how hurricane hazards can impact the 

fragility of wind turbines. NOAA AOML and Florida State University scientists published a 

paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlining the need for stochastic, 

wind field-based hurricane risk analysis. An NSF grant was awarded during the fiscal period to 

Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts to pursue research in this area and develop 

cost-effective design of turbine structures that will be resilient to hurricanes and other high-wind 

storms.

NSF: Collection of Perishable Hurricane Isaac Data on Weather-Related Damage to Power 

Infrastructure. Hurricane Isaac was a slow-moving tropical cyclone that severely impacted the 

Gulf coastlines of Louisiana and Mississippi during Fiscal Year 2012. It was a Category 1 storm 

with wind speeds in the range of the structural wind load design; however, the primary damage 

from the storm was the loss of electrical power over a large area due to high wind and a

relatively large storm surge, with the total number of people affected by the power outage 

exceeding one million. Due to these impacts, a Rapid Response Collaborative Research (RAPID) 

grant was given to Louisiana State University and the University of Washington to investigate 

and analyze the extensive power outages due to Isaac.

4.2.4 Community Services and Resilience 

NSF: CAREER Grant on Integrated Modeling of Sustainability and Reliability for 

Interdependent Infrastructure Systems. An NSF CAREER grant-funded research project at 

Johns Hopkins University awarded during the fiscal period is developing an approach for 

assessing the economic, environmental, and social sustainability and reliability of interdependent 

power and water systems. This approach will support proactive management of public and 

private infrastructure, particularly in areas susceptible to hurricanes and other windstorm 

hazards. The research is developing indicators for measuring trends in the sustainability of power 
24

and water and new computational frameworks for modeling interdependent power and water 

systems. The impacts of natural hazards such as hurricanes and other windstorms will be 

combined with the effects of aging to develop a more holistic reliability modeling approach for 

infrastructure systems. The reliability and sustainability models are brought into the 

infrastructure management process to help support meaningful change in power and water 

systems in hazard-prone areas. 

NSF: From Warnings to Evacuation in Hurricanes: A Holistic Investigation Using an 

Interdisciplinary Approach. In Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, researchers at Purdue University 

and Florida International University are developing new methodologies for hurricane evacuation 

by integrating behavioral modeling of household decision making with stochastic transportation 

modeling. The research will integrate social science concepts, network science tools, stochastic 

optimization, and agent base modeling (ABM) with the aim of understanding evacuation 

decision making at the household level. The project will undertake a survey of 800 households 

that have experienced a hurricane evacuation and determine what factors are related to 

compliance with evacuation warnings. These data will then be put into ABM transportation 

models. The proposal has the potential to significantly impact evacuation planning for 

hurricanes. An analysis of factors associated with household compliance with evacuation orders 

should facilitate the construction and dissemination of warning messages. 

NSF: Prioritizing and Selecting Bridge Management Actions for Heightened Truck Loads 

and Natural Hazards in Light of Funding Allocation Patterns. During the reporting period, a

team of investigators at Rice University is undertaking research related to bridge management 

for both normal operations and resilience to hurricanes and other windstorm hazards. It is 

examining both normal, day-to-day maintenance of bridges and the toll taken by aging 

infrastructure on survivability of bridges during extreme events. The project is developing new 

prioritization approaches to rank critical bridges for upgrade accounting for their vulnerability, 

network-level topology, and freight flow traversal. Also, the project involves probabilistic risk 

assessment and selection of mitigation actions to achieve operational safety, hazard protection,

and economic development, while reflecting aid allocation preferences and past project 

experience. It is likely to produce more cost-effective normal maintenance of bridge 

infrastructure as well as heightened resilience from extreme events.

NOAA: State of Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model. NOAA continued to work with the 

State of Florida during the fiscal period on the Public Hurricane Loss Model (FPHLM). The 

FPHLM is an open, transparent computer model that will be used by the Florida Office of 

Insurance Regulation to provide a baseline for evaluating rate change requests for windstorm 

insurance. The FPHLM is the first such model that enables all of the results and details from the 

modeling approach to be open to scrutiny. The model’s engineering component estimates

damage to residential structures within Florida zip codes and an actuarial component then

estimates the insured loss. The average annual loss is then estimated statewide for every zip code 

in Florida. The FPHLM was approved by the Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection 

Methodology in August 2010 and successfully passed the state certification process initiated in 

late 2012. 
25

FEMA: Maintain HAZUS-MH Hurricane Loss Estimation Model. FEMA developed and 

maintained the Hazards – U.S., Multi-Hazard model (or HAZUS-MH), a nationally applicable 

standardized methodology that contains models for estimating potential losses from multiple 

hazards, including hurricane winds. HAZUS-MH uses GIS technology to estimate physical, 

economic, and social impacts of disasters and graphically illustrates the limits of identified highrisk locations due to a region’s hazards. Users can then visualize the spatial relationships 

between populations and other more permanently fixed geographic assets or resources for the 

specific hazard being modeled, a crucial function in the pre-disaster planning process. During the 

reporting period for Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012, a storm surge component was added to the 

model as a collaborative effort with support from NOAA. In addition, a NOAA hurricane 

scientist and a NIST wind engineer serve on the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) for the 

hurricane hazard modeling portion of HAZUS-MH. The TAC provides expert review and 

oversight for the science and engineering behind HAZUS-MH.

4.3 OUTREACH

Reducing susceptibility to and destruction from severe windstorms requires action beyond the 

purview of the Federal Government. Zoning laws, building codes, and jurisdictional resources 

central to promoting pre-disaster mitigation and fostering disaster-resilient communities are 

controlled by state and local authorities. Ultimately, state, county, and municipal officials must 

implement sound land-use practices, informed urban-planning techniques, prudent development 

and reconstruction decisions, and effective disaster-response and recovery strategies that 

underpin resilient communities. Windstorm disaster-risk reduction is equally critical at the 

individual- and family-level and must be facilitated throughout community social networks.

History shows that a lack of situational awareness and preparation amongst citizens are common 

threads among many major wind-related disasters. By knowing one’s vulnerabilities and what 

actions should be taken to lessen them, members of the public can reduce the harmful effects of 

windstorms. Disaster preparedness significantly improves one’s ability to respond to the 

consequences of a windstorm hazard event – this means having emergency plans in place 

concerning what to do and where to go if a windstorm warning is issued or a hazard is observed. 

This type of community resilience, especially in vulnerable social populations, can be enhanced 

through a variety of means, including outreach and awareness programs and partnerships among

Federal and state agencies and the other members of the local community. Numerous 

informational and educational materials are distributed each year to promote the protection of 

individuals and property from high-wind events, including hurricanes, tornadoes and straight-line 

winds and from thunderstorms. Selected examples of such activities are highlighted below.

NOAA: Weather-Ready Nation Project. In the fiscal period of this report, the Weather-Ready 

Nation (WRN) project was initiated by NOAA. The purpose of the WRN initiative is, first and 

foremost, to save more lives and livelihoods. By increasing the Nation’s weather-readiness, the 

country will be prepared to protect, mitigate, respond to, and recover from weather-related 

disasters such as severe windstorms. Society’s ability to prepare for natural disasters requires a 

societal response equal to the risk, which is why NWS is leveraging its vast nationwide network 

of partners, and incorporating new ones who are beginning to share the vision of building a 
26

weather-ready nation.31 Partners in this program include: other Federal agencies, emergency 

managers, researchers, the media, the insurance industry, non-profits, and the private sector. In 

Fiscal Year 2012, three new emergency response specialists at the Baltimore, Maryland and 

Washington, District of Columbia forecast office under this project will allow NWS to improve 

its service to the region in a number of ways. For example, the office will now be able to provide 

a highly-trained and certified meteorologist on the scene during major weather events to give ondemand briefings.32 Other service enhancements include: cataloging local impacts from weather 

to give the public and local governments more information about what actions they need to take;

providing better explanations about differences between the forecast and the range of 

possibilities to help decision-makers plan for any possible scenario; mapping flood threats to 

allow emergency managers keep the public out of areas that are expected to flood; improving the 

distribution of weather information by keeping up with new communication technologies and 

social media; and working to achieve local weather-readiness where everyone gets a clear, 

understandable message when weather hazards such as severe windstorms are imminent and 

knows what to do to protect themselves. NSF joined NOAA in sponsorship of two of workshops 

(the first held in December 2011 at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma and the 

second in April 2012 in Birmingham, Alabama in recognition of recent tornado disasters 

impacting the southeastern United States) that served to bring together a broad range of physical 

and social scientists, emergency managers, and practicing forecasters to better frame next-steps 

in this highly cross-disciplinary activity.

FEMA: Education, Outreach, and Information Dissemination. The FEMA website, 

http://www.fema.gov, serves as the Nation's portal to emergency and disaster information. Most 

FEMA publications related to wind hazards were placed on the web, including many older 

documents that needed to be digitized in order to do so. Along with this digitization effort, a 

majority of FEMA wind and other hazard publications, which were previously uploaded to the 

Google Books website and are still maintained there, have now also been uploaded to MADCAD 

website and are now available for download on the Google E-Reader and other electronic

reading devices as well as through the MADCAD system. Dozens of presentations were given at 

conferences and other forums highlighting the importance of hurricane mitigation, and a number 

of outreach documents were produced, highlighting successful wind mitigation projects. FEMA 

partnerships were established with external organizations such as the Disney Corporation and the 

Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH), which has been operating an interactive exhibit titled 

“StormStruck: The Tale of Two Homes” at Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort Innoventions 

Pavilion for the last several years with over 700,000 annual visitors. The FLASH attraction 

allows visitors to experience a severe weather incident, such as a hurricane, with the goal of 

teaching the guests about cutting-edge technology used to protect homes. 

FEMA: Development of Technical Guidance Materials on State-of-the-Art Wind-Resistant 

Design and Construction Methods. Each year, many thousands of publications dealing with 

wind hazards are ordered and distributed by FEMA. For example, FEMA partnered with Texas 

Tech University and others to produce guides and provisions for safe room design and 

 

31 NOAA/NWS, Weather-Ready Nation FAQs, http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation/faqs.html

32 NOAA/NWS, NOAA ramps up Weather-Ready Nation initiative in nation’s capital, 

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2012/20120922_weatherready.html, September 2012
27

construction (FEMA P-320: Taking Shelter From the Storm: Building a Safe Room For Your 

Home or Small Business and FEMA P-361: Design and Construction Guidance for Community 

Safe Rooms). During the fiscal period, over 65,000 copies of FEMA P-320 and over 8,500 copies 

of FEMA P-361 were distributed to organizations across the U.S. Other recent examples 

include:

 Produced the Wind Retrofit Guide for Residential Buildings (FEMA P-804, December 

2010): The purpose of the document is to provide guidance on retrofitting existing 

buildings for improved performance during high-wind events in all coastal regions. It is 

applicable to one- and two-family dwellings. Although this guidance is primarily 

intended to be applied in the hurricane prone regions of the United States, it may also be 

applied to other regions.

 Completed an appendix to the Mitigation Assessment Team Report from the Spring 2011 

Tornadoes (FEMA P-908, May 2012): This appendix provides prescriptive guidance for 

enhanced construction techniques to improve performance of wood-frame residential 

structures when impacted by tornadoes rated EF-2 or less.

 Updated the Home Builder’s Guide to Coastal Construction, Technical Fact Sheet Series

(FEMA P-499, December 2010): A series of 37 fact sheets provide technical guidance 

and recommendations concerning the construction of coastal residential buildings. The 

fact sheets are aimed at improving the performance of buildings subject to flood and wind 

forces in coastal environments. Photographs and drawings illustrate the recommended 

design and construction practices for building components, including structural 

connections, the building envelope, and utilities.

 Updated the Coastal Construction Manual Principles and Practices of Planning, Siting, 

Designing, Constructing, and Maintaining Residential Buildings in Coastal Areas

(FEMA P-55 Volume I, August 2011): This is a two-volume publication that provides a 

comprehensive approach to planning, siting, designing, constructing, and maintaining 

homes in the coastal environment. Volume I provides information about hazard 

identification, siting decisions, regulatory requirements, economic implications, and risk 

management. The primary audience for Volume I is design professionals, officials, and 

those involved in the decision-making process. Volume II contains in-depth descriptions 

of design, construction, and maintenance practices that, when followed, will increase the 

durability of residential buildings in the harsh coastal environment and reduce economic 

losses associated with coastal natural disasters. The primary audience for Volume II is 

design professionals familiar with building codes and standards and has a basic 

understanding of engineering principles.

FHWA: Training and Technology Transfer. Technology transfer of high performance 

computational analysis techniques is an important part of ANL’s work to support and advance 

wind-related engineering and research programs at TFHRC. The technology transfer is 

accomplished by publishing techniques developed and the work done in reports and papers, 

presentations at conferences, and training courses in CFD capabilities and techniques offered by 

TRACC. A second two-day, hands-on training course was developed and provided to students, 

professionals, and U.S. Government representatives in March 2011 at ANL. The course 

consisted of lectures, practical examples, and detailed hands-on tutorials to demonstrate cuttingedge capabilities and techniques using CFD. In addition, a third course with updated and 

expanded materials was developed and presented in March 2012.
28

FHWA: Seminar on Arch and Cable-Supported Signature Bridges. In Fiscal Year 2012, the 

National Highway Institute (NHI) launched a new training course on arch and cable-supported 

signature bridges with windstorm-related impacts in mind. The NHI’s one-day Cable-Stayed 

Signature Bridge Seminar is intended to provide participants with an introduction to planning, 

design, and construction of long-span, cable-stayed bridges. The seminar provides an overview 

of the features of cable-stayed bridges; their construction and maintenance considerations; and 

analyses needed to design these highly redundant structures including special aerodynamic 

studies. Major topics covered in this seminar include: bridge configurations, construction 

methodology, component details, analysis, aerodynamics, design methodology, construction 

engineering, and maintenance and inspection.

5. THE NEED FOR CONTINUED INVESTMENT

The destructive impacts of recent extreme windstorms – including the outbreak of tornadoes in 

April 2011 in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia and in May 2011 in Joplin, 

Missouri, as well as Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, Isaac in August 2012, and Irene in 

August 2011 – underscore the need for continued investments to make the buildings, cities, 

towns, and communities in which we live, and the infrastructure upon which we depend, not only 

less vulnerable to the forces of nature, but also more resilient when disasters unfold. How these 

events affect us reflects not only the power of nature, but also the decisions we make in how we 

build and safeguard our communities. Although hurricanes and other windstorm-related drivers 

of coastal inundation, storm surge, and high wind are inevitable, disaster-resilient communities 

experience less damage and recover more quickly from hazard events. 

Successfully reducing the impact of wind hazards requires that actions be taken, directly or 

indirectly, to lengthen warning lead-times while improving accuracy and precision and change or 

enhance existing building practices, infrastructure resilience, social behavior patterns, and 

evacuation processes. Recent improvements in warning systems, evacuation planning, and 

building technology have reduced the threat of windstorms to people even while the total number 

of people, buildings, and critical infrastructure exposed to windstorms has grown dramatically. 

Fundamental research on the meteorological aspects of wind hazards is continuing with support 

from the Federal agencies, and there are a number of areas where additional knowledge and 

action have reduced the impact of windstorms to lives and property. Notable successes have been 

demonstrated in the following areas:

 Advances in NOAA’s satellite‐based observations, supercomputers, and data assimilation 

and modeling have reduced average hurricane forecast track errors significantly, to about 

half as large as they were 15 years ago;

 Advances in the use of aircraft data have demonstrated the potential for significant 

improvements in hurricane intensity forecasts (20 to 40 percent), breaking a 30-year 

logjam in intensity forecast improvements;

 Improvements in the understanding of tornadogenesis as well as forecasting and 

prediction have enabled NWS to double the average lead time for tornado warnings over 

the past two decades to 13 minutes;
29

 Gains in structural engineering research and mitigation assessment have allowed FEMA 

to issue new guides and provisions for better and more efficient safe room design and 

construction against windstorms;

 Results of wind engineering research and post-storm studies by NIST have led to changes 

in the wind loading provisions of the ASCE 7 Standard and IBC that enhance life safety 

and property protection for windstorms;

 Improvements in tornado intensity estimation (developed jointly by NIST, NOAA, and 

Texas Tech University) have allowed the EF tornado scale to be introduced by the NWS 

in 2007 to reflect more accurate examinations of tornado damage surveys and to align 

wind speeds more closely and effectively with associated storm damage;

 Advances in cutting-edge research through NSF grants to academic institutions will 

improve understanding of wind, rain, and surge effects on buildings and has promoted the 

development of the next generation of professionals educated in the windstorm mitigation 

discipline; and

 Progress in research funded by NSF grants have strengthened windstorm disaster 

evacuation management practices in the U.S. through advancements in planning and 

preparedness efforts and a better understanding of how communities perform in hosting 

incoming evacuees.

Although the overall threat of injury or death posed by windstorms is being reduced, the total 

amount of damage and loss continues to rise and much more needs to be done. Further

improvements in windstorm prediction capabilities are essential, and additional observations are 

also needed to advance understanding of how the built environment responds to windstorm 

events. Methods and tools for wind-hazard exposure predictions are required for structural 

design purposes and improved methodologies for site-specific wind models and more refined and 

locally-detailed wind speed/hazard maps remain a critical need. In addition, efficient warning 

systems and social analysis are critically needed to improve warning response, mitigate user 

complacency, better support effective decision making, and reduce the losses associated with 

devastating windstorms.

To help address these and related issues, the NWIRP agencies, academia, and the private sector 

will build on past activities to identify and prioritize specific measurement science research and 

development needs for windstorm impact reduction. Continued support and leadership of senior 

Federal policymakers and a national commitment to reducing hazard vulnerability through 

enhanced knowledge and applied science and technology should lead to enhanced disaster 

prevention and resilience throughout the Nation’s communities.
30

APPENDIX A: AGENCY ACTIVITIES IN FISCAL YEARS 2009

AND 2010

UNDERSTANDING WINDSTORMS FOR IMPROVED PREDICTIONS, FORECASTS, AND 

WARNINGS

Hurricanes

NOAA: Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program. The HFIP provides the basis for NOAA 

and other agencies to coordinate and align Federal research with that of the larger scientific 

community. The specific goals of the HFIP are to reduce the average errors of hurricane track 

and intensity forecasts by 20 percent within five years and 50 percent within 10 years while 

extending the forecast period out to seven days with accuracy equal to today's five-day forecast. 

In Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010, HFIP provided funding to numerous efforts within NOAA, other 

Federal agencies, and universities to support the development, testing, and evaluation of 

enhanced numerical prediction systems. System demonstrations showed that five-year track 

forecast goals can be achieved when recently developed data assimilation systems and existing 

operational global models are run as an ensemble at a specific resolution (20 km). Preliminary 

results also showed that intensity forecasting goals can be achieved using Doppler radar and 

other data from aircraft, advanced data assimilation systems, and regional models, when run as 

an ensemble at high resolution (3 km). Another notable success of the program included the 

rapid transitioning of models from the research phase to development and testing as part of

HFIP’s Real-time Experimental Forecast System.

NOAA: Hurricane Wind Analysis System. Developed by the Hurricane Research Division of 

NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, H*Wind is an integrated 

tropical cyclone observing system in which wind measurements from a variety of observation 

systems are used to objectively analyze the distribution of wind speeds in a hurricane. The 

product is designed to improve understanding of the extent and strength of the wind field as well 

as the assessment of hurricane intensity. H*Wind “snapshot” products are provided both in 

image and gridded form for research purposes and are useful for storm surge and wave 

forecasting applications. Wind swath maps are also produced and are helpful for damage and 

loss assessment. Within the fiscal period, retrospective analyses of 2008 Hurricanes Ike and 

Gustav were supplied to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to be used as input to 

wave and storm surge models to better understand damage to coastal structures.33

 

33 Representative publications: Dietrich, J.C., J. J. Westerink, A. B. Kennedy, J. M. Smith, R. E. Jensen, M. Zijlema, 

L. H. Holthuijsen, C. Dawson, R. A. Leuttich Jr., M. D. Powell, V. J. Cardone, A. T. Cox, G. W. Stone, H. 

Pourtaheri, M. E. Hope, S. Tanaka, L. G. Westerink, H. J. Westerink, Z. Cobell (2011). Hurricane Gustav 

(2008) waves and storm surge: Hindcast, synoptic analysis, and validation in Southern Louisiana. Mon. Wea.

Rev., 137, in press.

Kennedy, A. B., U. Gravious, B. C. Zachary, J. J. Westerink, M. E. Hope, J. C. Dietrich, M. D. Powell, A. T. 

Cox, R. A. Luettich Jr., and R. G. Dean (2011). Origin of the Hurricane Ike forerunner surge. Geophys. Res. 

Lett., 38, L08608.
31

NOAA/NSF/NASA: Tri-agency Study on Hurricane Formation and Intensification. 

NOAA's Hurricane Research Division implemented a multi-year experiment to improve 

hurricane intensity forecasting. The IFEX is collecting observations that will aid in the 

improvement of current operational models and the development of the next-generation 

Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting operational model. During Fiscal Year 2010, the 

NOAA IFEX team partnered with NSF and NASA in a tri-agency study of the formation of 

hurricanes in the Atlantic basin. In combination, these agencies deployed multiple aircraft over a 

45-day period during the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season to gather robust and 

complimentary data sets. Within this broader effort, the NSF’s PREDICT field experiment 

specifically focused on multi-scale interactions in the tropical wave-like disturbances that 

influence cyclone formation. During the effort, NASA’s GRIP experiment featured the debut of 

the agency’s Global Hawk drone in a hurricane research capacity. The drone’s 24-hour flight 

time gave scientists the ability to directly observe Hurricane Karl as it changed over time in a 

way that conventional planes and satellites had not done before. The time on station for 

conventional manned aircraft reconnaissance is typically about 6 hours, with a lapse of about 6 

hours before the next aircraft may arrive when the storm is within reach of conventional aircraft. 

Unmanned aircraft have significantly more capacity for time on station – typically up to 24 hours 

for a single aircraft – allowing continuous surveillance of the storm to measure high frequency (1 

hour or less) changes in storm structure not observable by other platforms.

NOAA: In situ Measurements of Turbulence in Hurricanes – Extreme Turbulence Probe. 

As part of NOAA’s ongoing effort to improve forecasting of rapid changes in hurricane 

intensity, the agency has been developing a pressure-sphere anemometer – known as the Extreme 

Turbulence Probe – for measuring turbulence and flux within hurricanes. Since 2009, NOAA’s 

Air Resources Laboratory has received funding through the HFIP to deploy these probes on 

offshore platforms to measure air-sea exchange in hurricane conditions. Funding for onshore 

deployment of the probes would allow for measurements when hurricanes make landfall. Data 

from the probes will be used to better understand wind loading on structures. The wind energy 

industry has also expressed interest in such measurements as a means to better understand the 

impacts of hurricanes on near-shore wind farms.

Tornadoes, Thunderstorms, and Other Severe Weather

NOAA: Warn-on-Forecast. NOAA’s NSSL is working with NWS to develop a new vision for 

the warning decision process, which continues to evolve as scientists and engineers work toward 

integrating the next generation radar (e.g., rapid scanning phased array radar) and storm-scale 

numerical models to create a storm-scale prediction capability for the NWS. The NSSL will 

continue to investigate various model convective parameterization schemes, along with 

techniques to improve model initialization through four-dimensional data assimilation. 

Beginning in Fiscal Year 2010, the NSSL received funding to support the WoF program. Within 

the next decade, the NSSL envisions operational units using a Warn-on-Forecast methodology, 

allowing forecasters to use thunderstorm-resolving computer models for severe weather 

warnings for tornadoes, winds, hail, and flash floods in the same way they do today with the 

current Doppler radar systems. Evidence suggests that these enhancements to operational 

weather capabilities will lead to a more accurate warning system, increase lead time, and provide 

probabilistic information to the public to support risk-wise actions during severe weather events. 
32

The WoF program is conducted in collaboration with the NOAA ESRL/GSD, the NWS SPC, 

and the NWS Forecast Office in Norman, Oklahoma.

NOAA/NSF: Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2. In Fiscal 

Years 2009 and 2010, NSF and NOAA jointly supported VORTEX2, the largest and most 

ambitious tornado field study conducted to date, at the writing of this report. This $14 million 

effort involved nearly 100 scientists and students from 16 American universities and academic 

organizations; forecasters from NWS and its SPC; as well as Environment Canada, the 

Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The VORTEX2 

teams sought to better understand how, when, and why tornadoes form. Specifically, they 

investigated the physical properties governing the timing and location of tornadogenesis; tornado 

structure; low-level winds within tornadoes and their relationship to localized damage patterns; 

and the relationships between tornadoes, their parent thunderstorms, and the larger-scale 

environment. Efforts in and around central Oklahoma yielded a particularly rich and promising 

set of data harvested from Multifunction Phased Array Radar and in situ observing assets of the 

Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. Further analysis of these and 

other data from the two-year VORTEX2 experiment should advance the understanding of 

tornado formation, improve prediction, and offer prospects for increased warning times. 

NSF: Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. CASA, an NSF-funded 

Engineering Research Center led by the University of Massachusetts, sought to increase the 

warning lead-times and forecast accuracy for tornadoes and other severe weather during the 

reporting period. In Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010, a CASA data stream was integrated into 

NOAA’s AWIPS, allowing for the display of real-time data from the Integrated Project 1 

Systems Test Bed (located in southwestern Oklahoma) to be accessed by NWS forecasters, 

warning coordination meteorologists and other key personnel who assist in storm evaluation, 

issuance of local warnings, and siren activation. The CASA radar data were also accessed by 

emergency-management personnel, both at operational centers and in the field via wireless 

communications technologies, to facilitate improved neighborhood-level response to severe 

weather events impacting the test-bed region. Work is underway for the Dallas-Fort Worth 

CASA radar network to be fully installed and operational starting in Fiscal Year 2014, which 

would allow for a more intensive evaluation of system performance and emergency management 

user integration in a major urban area.

NOAA: Hazardous Weather Testbed. NOAA’s NSSL, NWS SPC, and NWS Forecast Office 

in Norman, Oklahoma continued joint testing of new techniques and applications for enhancing 

forecasts and warnings of hazardous weather, particularly thunderstorms and their attendant 

damaging winds. HWT is designed to accelerate the transition of promising new meteorological 

insights and technologies into advances in forecasting and warning for hazardous mesoscale 

weather events throughout the U.S. The testbed project has also been expanded to include highresolution model runs conducted by the University of Oklahoma’s Center for Analysis and 

Prediction of Storms and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

NOAA: Severe Hazards Analysis and Verification Experiment. Within the fiscal period, 

NOAA’s NSSL collected high-resolution severe weather reports as part of the SHAVE program. 

The primary goal of the SHAVE program is to blend high-resolution radar data with geographic 
33

information to obtain highly-detailed verification reports. These reports were initially undertaken 

to compile hail data for the verification of automated, radar-based hail algorithms. In Fiscal 

Years 2009 and 2010, the scope of the reports was expanded to include data from algorithms on 

wind damage and flash flooding. The algorithms are validated based on severe weather reports 

obtained through NWS’s verification process, and data collected during the project should 

facilitate the development of decision-making tools for improving forecasts and warnings of 

severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Additionally, this effort will better establish the timing, 

extent, and intensity of severe weather, paving the way for improvements to the historical severe 

storms database.

NOAA: Large-Scale Influences on Seasonal Severe Weather Behavior. NOAA has an 

ongoing mission to develop a severe weather database to empirically estimate wind hazards

across the continental United States. During Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010, the NWS SPC 

developed hazard estimates as a function of the various Global Climate Cycles related to the 

occurrence of convective storms. This ongoing research will permit NOAA to provide risk 

assessments that vary as a function of climate indices.34

ASSESSING AND REDUCING WINDSTORM IMPACTS

Buildings and Structures

NIST: Wind Engineering. NIST’s wind engineering research is focused on developing the 

measurements, tools, and methodologies necessary to substantially improve: (1) wind hazard

estimation through better databases and maps; (2) the estimation of wind loads on structures, 

through the development of database-assisted design techniques incorporating wind 

directionality effects; and (3) the prediction of structural responses to these loads, leading to 

safer and more economical designs. Progress in wind-hazard estimation was made in Fiscal 

Years 2009 and 2010 through the development of improved methods for estimating directional 

wind speeds, which in turn can improve the engineering designs for buildings and structures.35 A 

new and comprehensive analysis of historical records of wind events in the U.S. was undertaken 

to: (1) account for directional variation in the wind exposure of the anemometers and changes in 

exposure over time; and (2) identify extreme wind events in the record by type (hurricane, 

thunderstorm, or synoptic). Once completed, this analysis will provide the basis for a 

significantly improved set of wind-speed design maps for use in wind loading standards and 

codes. NIST’s research in wind loading on structures during Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010 

included: (1) the initial development of a novel wind tunnel testing methodology that 

incorporated recent findings regarding aerodynamic contributions of low-frequency turbulent 

fluctuations to total response to wind loads; (2) studies comparing database-assisted design 

methods with standard estimates from the ASCE 7 national wind loading standards; and (3) the 

investigation of numerical analysis methods (computational fluid dynamics approaches) for use 

 

34 Representative publication: Cook, A.R., & Schaefer, J.T. (2008). The Relation of El Niño Southern Oscillation 

(ENSO) to winter tornado activity. Mon. Wea. Rev., 136, 3121-3137.

35 Representative publication: Grigoriu, M.D. (2009). Algorithms for Generating Large Sets of Synthetic Directional 

Wind Speed Data for Hurricane, Thunderstorm, and Synoptic Winds. NIST Technical Note 1626.
34

in determining wind loads on buildings and structures.36 During the fiscal period, NIST also 

developed powerful and comprehensive database-assisted design procedures that substantially 

improved modeling of wind effects and design algorithms for buildings subjected to wind 

loads.37 The procedures incorporate some aspects of the wind hazard and wind loading research 

described previously, as well as:

 Effects of veering of wind on dynamic response of tall buildings;

 More accurate, transparent, and user-friendly approaches to calculating wind effects on 

tall buildings, made possible by novel capabilities to numerically solve simultaneous 

differential equations of dynamic motion, and which will replace obsolete spectral 

methods developed in the 1960’s; and

 Multi-hazard approaches to assessing synergy of structural solutions in multi-hazard 

conditions and design criteria on wind and earthquake load combinations.

The described wind engineering data, analysis methods, tools, and reports are available on the 

NIST website at http://www.nist.gov/wind. NIST also invested significant effort to advance the 

latest design methods and standards.38 NIST research influenced the development of the latest 

edition of the national wind loading standards ASCE 7 in the following areas:

 The application of database-assisted design in engineering practice;

 The relationship between the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Intensity Scale and design wind 

speeds for buildings and other structures; and

 Accounting for wind directionality effects in structural design. 

FEMA: Improving Wind-Resistant Provisions. During the fiscal period, FEMA worked with 

its partners to develop and incorporate high-wind-resistant provisions and requirements in the 

Nation’s model building codes and standards. Working with other Federal agencies, state and 

local governments, building regulators, building industry groups, and other entities, FEMA 

advocated for specific changes to increase wind-resistant requirements of the IBC, ASCE 7,

American Society for Testing and Materials standards, and other industry documents. As a result 

of these efforts, buildings are being built stronger, reducing the risks of death, injury, and 

property loss from high-wind storms. Furthermore, using the initial FEMA Safe Room 

 

36 Representative publications: Coffman, B., Main, J., Duthinh, D., and Simiu, E. (2010). “Wind Effects on LowRise Metal Buildings: Database-Assisted Design vs. ASCE 7-05 Standard Estimates.” J. Struct. Eng., June 

2010, 744-748.

Simiu, E. (2009), Toward a Standard on the Wind Tunnel Method. NIST Technical Note 1655.

Yeo, D. (2010). Numerical simulation of along-wind loading on small structures using a simplified wind flow 

model. NIST Technical Note 1683.

37 Representative publications: Spence, S.M.J. (2009). High-Rise Database-Assisted Design 1.1(HR_DAD_1.1): 

Concepts, Software, and Examples, Building Science Series 181.

Yeo, D. (2010). Database-Assisted Design of high-rise reinforced concrete structures for wind: Concepts, 

software, and application. NIST Technical Note 1665. 

Yeo, D., and Simiu, E. (2010). Effects of veering wind and structure orientation on a high-rise structure. NIST 

Technical Note 1672. 

Duthinh, D., and Simiu, E. (2010). Safety of Structures in Strong Winds and Earthquakes: Multihazard 

Considerations. J. Struct. Eng., March 2010, 136, 330-333.

Potra, F. and Simiu, E. (2009). Optimization and Multi-Hazard Design. J. Eng. Mech., Dec. 2009, 1472-1475.

38 Representative publication: Simiu E., "Wind Loading Codification in the Americas: Fundamentals for a 

Renewal," Keynote lecture, Proc., 11th Americas Conference on Wind Engineering, June 2009.
35

publications as a pre-standard, design and construction professionals, led by the ICC and NSSA, 

joined forces to produce the first ICC/NSSA Standard for the Design and Construction of Storm 

Shelters (ICC-500), which was adopted in 2009 as a referenced standard to the IBC.

FEMA: Mitigation Assessment Team Evaluations Following Major Hurricanes, Tornadoes 

and Windstorms. In Fiscal Year 2010, a FEMA MAT responded to the April 23-24 tornado 

outbreak in Mississippi. As part of that effort, FEMA also deployed a Pre-Mitigation Assessment 

Team to survey the general structural damage and the performance of the residential and 

community safe rooms located along the path of the Tallulah-Yazoo City-Durant tornado. 

Tornado classification, building damage, building performance, and safe room information was 

collected through investigative site visits and surveys by the PMAT. These investigations 

allowed the team to capture important observations, lessons learned, and recommendations 

regarding the performance of:

 FEMA-funded residential safe rooms, which were impacted by tornadic winds and 

debris, and that had been constructed in accordance with guidance provided by the 

FEMA P-320 report Taking Shelter from the Storm: Building a Safe Room for your Home 

or Small Business; 

 FEMA-funded community safe rooms, which were impacted by tornadic winds and 

debris, and that had been constructed in accordance with provisions contained in the 

FEMA P-361 report Design and Construction Guidance for Community Safe Rooms; and 

 Community safe room operations plans.

In Fiscal Year 2009, FEMA completed a report based on the field investigation findings of a 

MAT it had previously deployed in response to the damage caused by Hurricane Ike in 2008 to

Galveston, Texas, and the nearby Bolivar Peninsula. The team was sent to evaluate and assess 

damage from that storm and provide observations on the performance of structures impacted by 

flood and wind forces. The team was also asked to develop recommendations for improved 

disaster-resistant construction based on best-available practices and science. The resulting report 

laid out a number of important recommendations, including the need to sufficiently elevate 

coastal structures to withstand the effects of hurricane storm surge and the importance of 

adopting and enforcing disaster-resistant building codes, including wind provisions.

NIST: Study of the Dallas Cowboys Indoor Practice Facility Collapse. Following the 

collapse of the Dallas Cowboys indoor practice facility during a thunderstorm on May 2, 2009, 

NIST conducted a study to determine how and why the facility collapsed and identify areas of 

improvement to current building codes and standards. The facility was a fabric-covered, tubular, 

steel-frame structure, a design often used for sports, industrial, and agricultural facilities, as well 

as casinos, military installations, and aircraft hangars. NIST worked with NOAA’s NSSL to 

estimate the wind conditions at the time of the collapse, and conducted a field investigation and 

analytical study to evaluate and understand the wind loads and structural response. The final 

report39 includes recommendations for improving the safety of these structures.

 

39 Gross, J.L., Main, J.A., Phan, L.T., Sadek, F.H., Cauffman, S.A., and Jorgensen, D.P., Final Report on the 

Collapse of the Dallas Cowboys Indoor Practice Facility, May 2, 2009. NISTIR 7661, National Institute of 

Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland, January 2010.
36

NSF: Multi-Scale Computational Evaluation of Wind Load on Buildings. The NSF

supported research at Florida International University to develop and validate new, multi-scale 

modeling approaches appropriate for evaluating wind loads for both low- and high-rise 

buildings. The models will be validated through small-scale experiments in a wind tunnel and 

full-scale experiments in the university’s Wall of Wind facility. The project is expected to 

provide accurate methods for evaluating wind loads on buildings for high-wind-speed events

(such as category 4 and 5 hurricanes). The results of the project will be used to improve building 

codes to advance safer, economical housing design, and for work with the insurance industry and 

government to develop mitigation implementation strategies and improved loss estimation 

models. 

NSF: Full-Scale and Modeled Hurricane Wind Loads on Residential Structures. Scale 

model tests in boundary layer wind tunnels have been the primary tool for the development of 

the design wind loads prescribed in codes. However, questions have been raised concerning the 

ability of wind-tunnel methods to replicate the hurricane wind environment and to determine 

peak loads on low-rise structures in hurricanes. An NSF grant awarded to the University of 

Florida during the fiscal period will fund research to: (1) quantify the precision and accuracy of 

wind-tunnel modeling of extreme wind loads on low-rise structures; and (2) develop more 

accurate representations of the turbulence within hurricane wind fields. Both efforts will utilize 

an existing hurricane wind velocity and pressure-load database collected in-field during eleven 

hurricane seasons. Results of the research are expected to provide a basis for changes to enhance 

current experimental wind-load evaluation methods and prescriptive wind-load practice. 

NOAA: Reducing Wind-Induced Damages. In Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010, with funding from 

NOAA, Iowa State University collected wind data in the vicinity of tornadoes for verification 

and calibration of a wind simulation and testing simulator. Additional tasks undertaken by Iowa 

State include: 

 Working to simulate hurricane winds around built structures;

 Modeling tornadic winds near a “rough” surface in a tornado simulator;

 Simulating straight-wind and tornado flow fields in and around different types and 

configurations of buildings and vegetative barriers;

 Assessing wind damage potential of buildings as a function of distribution of local wind 

speed and wind-borne debris impacts;

 Studying the optimum shelterbelt configuration to reduce hurricane wind hazard to cities 

along coastal areas; and

 Investigating a new aerodynamic shape of an extreme-wind-resistant residential 

building.40

NIST: Combined Hurricane Storm Surge, Wind, and Wave Modeling. NIST’s research on 

storm surge is aimed at providing a science-based methodology for accurate characterization of 

 

40 Representative publication: Karstens, C.D. & Gallus, Jr., W.A. (2008). Simulations of near-ground hurricane 

winds influenced by built structures. Extended Abstracts, 28th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical 

Meteorology, Orlando, Florida: Amer. Meteor. Soc. Also: Sengupta, A., Haan, F.L., Sarkar, P.P., & 

Balaramudu, V. (2008). Transient loads on buildings in microburst and tornado winds. J. Wind Eng. Ind. 

Aerodyn., dio:10.1016/j.jweia.2008.02.050.
37

the risks associated with combined hurricane hazards, including hurricane wind, storm surge, and 

waves. The methodology will be used for developing risk-consistent structural design criteria for 

structures in coastal regions which are affected by the combined effects of hurricane hazards. 

NIST’s approach in this project is integrative and interdisciplinary, incorporating state-of-the-art 

knowledge in hurricane science (wind speed modeling), hydrology (storm surge modeling), and 

probabilistically-based structural engineering. The developed methodology allows: (1) 

estimation of design risk associated with combinations of hurricane wind speeds and storm surge 

heights, with appropriate accounting for site dependency (i.e., the effects of local topography and 

bathymetry on which storm surge at any specific location is highly dependent); and (2) 

consideration of the effects of waves, which add to total inundation. During Fiscal Years 2009

and 2010, working in collaboration with NOAA’s NWS, Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Research (OAR), and NHC, as well as the University of Florida, NIST: 

 Implemented the methodology developed in the pilot effort carried out in Fiscal Years 

2007 and 2008 (NIST TN 1482, Methodology for Development of Design Criteria for 

Joint Hurricane Wind Speed and Storm Surge Events: Proof of Concept (2007)) to test its 

application in four large basins in the State of Florida, encompassing the Tampa Bay, 

Fort Myers, Biscayne Bay, and Florida Keys areas; 

 Developed a graphical user interface tool, known as Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges 

from Hurricanes (SLOSH) MapXtract, to address the data processing challenges 

associated with large amounts of data generated by the methodology and to make the 

NIST methodology practical by providing users with a map-based tool for selecting the 

site of interest with knowledge of local topography; and 

 Developed a pilot methodology to account for waves in storm surge simulations using 

NOAA’s SLOSH program by coupling the Simulating Waves Nearshore wave model 

with the SLOSH model.41

NOAA Alternative Metrics of Tropical Cyclone Impact Project. The Saffir-Simpson 

Hurricane Scale, which categorizes tropical cyclones according to maximum sustained surface 

wind speed, fails to consider the size of the area impacted by the winds, which influences storm 

surge and wave height. The Hurricane Research Division of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic 

and Meteorological Laboratory, in partnership with external researchers and the IBHS, 

previously developed a measurement tool known as IKE to better capture the wind-related forces 

associated with severe storms. The IKE, which is computed from H*Wind gridded surface wind 

fields, represents a framework that captures the physical process of ocean surface stress that 

forces waves and surge, while also taking into account structural wind loading and the spatial 

coverage of wind.

 

41 Representative Publications: Phan, L.T., and Simiu, E., “A Methodology for Developing Risk-Consistent Design 

Criteria For Coastal Structures Exposed To Hurricane Wind Speed And Storm Surge Hazards,” Proceedings, 

Hurricane Hugo 20th Anniversary Symposium on Building Safer Communities – Improving Disaster Resilience, 

ATC-77, pp 3-1 to 3-19, Charleston, South Carolina, October 2009.

Phan, L.T.; Slinn, D.N., Kline, S.W., Introduction of Wave Set-up Effects and Mass Flux to the Sea, Lake, and 

Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) Model, NISTIR 7689, National Institute of Standards and 

Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland, May 2010.
38

An IKE calculator was tested during the 2009 and 2010 hurricane seasons and will be 

implemented for real-time use in 2011. The calculator allows users to enter wind radii from 

official hurricane advisories in order to estimate IKE-based measures of a storm’s destructive 

wind and surge potential. The scale proved useful for depicting the destructive potential of 

Hurricane Igor as it approached Canada in 2010; Igor possessed one of the largest wind fields yet 

documented in the Atlantic hurricane basin, at the time of this writing.

FHWA/NIST/NOAA/NSF: U.S.-Japan Panel on Wind and Seismic Effects. FHWA, NIST, 

NOAA, and the NSF all participate on the U.S.-Japan Panel on Wind and Seismic Effects. NIST 

also chairs and provides a technical secretariat for the panel. The panel serves as a mechanism 

for the exchange of technical data, information, and researchers, as well as the coordination of 

joint research on wind and seismic-related topics of mutual interest to the U.S. and Japan. 

FHWA staff participate on the panel and its wind engineering task committees (TC), specifically 

the TC-D Wind Engineering and TC-G Transportation groups. The TC-D group has held five 

international workshops, and the TC-G group has held 26 such workshops. During Fiscal Year

2010, the U.S. hosted the fifth U.S.-Japan Workshop on Wind Engineering in Chicago, Illinois. 

The meeting focused on assessing the results of recently completed collaborative research42on 

tornado loads on low-rise buildings, stay cable vibrations, long-span-bridge flutter, as well as 

identifying new collaborative projects.

Bridges and Highways

NSF: Reliability-Based Analysis and Design Loads For Slender Long-Span Bridges. More 

than 800 slender long-span bridges contained in the national bridge inventory are classified as 

fracture-critical, which means they do not contain redundant supporting elements and would be 

in danger of collapse if the bridge’s key supports fail. With NSF funding, researchers at 

Colorado State University undertook studies of the dynamic interaction of slender long-span 

bridge structures under combined wind and traffic loads. These combined loads can cause 

fatigue-fracture accumulation, deterioration, and, at times, related safety issues for these bridge 

systems. The project focused on understanding the dynamic behavior of bridge structures and the 

development of an integrated, dynamic model to assess the lifetime performance of slender longspan bridges under combined wind and traffic loads. This research will help engineers to: (1) 

reliably predict load response, performance, and remaining life of slender long-span bridge 

systems; (2) identify potential sources and risk of damage; and (3) design retrofit measures to 

improve performance and prolong the lives of these structures. 

FHWA: Monitoring of Wind Conditions and Structural Performance. During the fiscal 

period, the FHWA HRDI monitored winds and structural performance at selected bridge sites to 

establish and characterize site-specific wind conditions and the responses of the bridges to 

varying wind conditions. The sites of three major long-span, cable-supported bridges were 

monitored during the reporting period – Deer Isle, Hale Boggs, and the C&D Canal. Data were

collected on a continuous basis; however, no major storm events were observed. The data 

 

42 Representative publication: W. P. Fritz, B. Bienkiewicz, B. Cui, O. Flamand, T. C. E. Ho, H. Kikitsu, C. W. 

Letchford, and E. Simiu, “International Comparison of Wind Tunnel Estimates of Wind Effects on Low-Rise 

Buildings: Test-Related Uncertainties,” J. Struct. Eng.,134, 1887–1890, 2008.
39

gathered during this monitoring period provided valuable information for the calibration of 

numerical tools and predictive methods; the improvement of physical modeling techniques in the 

laboratory; the evaluation and validation of new designs; and the development and assessment of 

mitigation measures.

FHWA: Full Scale Measurement of Structural Dynamic Properties. In an ongoing program 

to characterize the dynamic properties of bridge stay cables, which are critical to structural 

performance and aerodynamic stability, the analysis of data from full-scale, forced vibration tests 

on selected major structures continued during Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010. Tests were performed 

on the Zakim, Emerson, and Penobscot Narrows bridges. The results of cable tests performed on 

the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, both prior to the opening of the bridge in 2006 and one year later,

following installation of dampers on the cables, were reported at the 2009 Americas Conference 

on Wind Engineering.

43 Information collected during the tests enabled further evaluation of 

design details and an assessment of the effectiveness of various mitigation measures such as 

dampers, cross ties, and aerodynamic surface treatments. The information also serves as a 

benchmark that will be useful during later inspections to assess the bridge’s structural condition 

and overall health.

FHWA: Physical Modeling of Wind Effects on Highway Structures. A project continued

during the fiscal period under FHWA’s EAR program to develop a new system to perform 

volumetric particle image velocimetry. This will enable detailed flow visualizations during a 

laboratory study of fluid-structure interactions. This new technology will be a valuable tool in

performing aerodynamic studies of wind effects on highway structures as well as for hydraulic 

issues associated with scour and storm surge. Another project underway within the EAR program 

will develop a system using pressure-sensitive paint and surface-stress-sensitive film to measure 

wind forces on structural models in the laboratory. Two small-scale bridge models were 

fabricated and instrumented with pressure taps for testing in the FHWA’s small wind tunnel. 

Also within the fiscal period, automation of both wind tunnels in the Aerodynamics Laboratory 

at the FHWA’s TFHRC was completed.

FHWA: Numerical Modeling of Wind Effects on Highway Structures. An interagency 

agreement was established between DOT and DOE for modeling the effects of natural hazards, 

such as windstorms, hydraulics, and flooding, on infrastructure. This agreement will enable 

FHWA to utilize high-performance computing and support staff from the Argonne National 

Laboratory. Resources located at the Transportation Research and Analysis Computing Center 

will be used to model wind effects on highway users as well as highway structures. Enhancement 

of the UABRIM (University of Arkansas BRIdge Moving) computational fluid dynamics model 

continued through the implementation of unstructured and adaptive grids for use in simulating 

the interaction between wind and structures such as large bridges.44, 45 This computer simulation 

 

43 Bosch, H.R., and Pagenkopf, J.R., “Dynamic Properties of Stay Cables on the Penobscot Narrows Bridge,” 

Proceedings, 11th Americas Conference on Wind Engineering, San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 2009.

44 Selvam, R.P., Bosch, H.R., Joshi, R. (2010). Comparison of 2D and 3D CFD modeling of bridge aerodynamics. 

Proceedings. 5

th International Symposium on Computational Wind Engineering, Chapel Hill, NC, May.

45 Patro, S. K., Selvam, R. P., & Bosch, H. R. (2010). Bridge flutter modeling using h-adaptive FEM. Journal of 

Wind and Engineering, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 39-48. 
40

tool will be used to evaluate wind flow around and interaction with major highway bridges. It 

also will identify undesirable tendencies for vortex-induced response, or “flutter” instability. 

Finite element modeling, using the commercial program SAP 2000, was performed to study the 

efficacy of various approaches for mitigating wind-induced vibration of bridge stay cables. A 

comprehensive laboratory report was drafted for internal review and should be published early in 

the next biennial reporting period.46

FHWA: Development of Design Guidelines. Research continued on the issue of wind- and 

wind/rain-induced vibration of bridge stay cables. A second iteration of a draft guidelines 

document on the aerodynamic design of bridge stay cables was further updated. Following 

review, the document will provide guidance on the aerodynamic design of cables and cable 

networks on major new highway bridges and for retrofit of existing structures to mitigate windinduced vibration problems.

FHWA: Monitoring Weather and Alleviating Impact on Highway Operations. Below is a 

short list of major activities and accomplishments associated with monitoring weather and 

alleviating the weather-related impacts to highway operations. Publications associated with these 

efforts are located at: http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/resources/publications.htm.

 Developed the Clarus System, a database management system that acquires, checks 

quality and disseminates road weather observations from 1,700 sensor stations 

(comprised of more than 34,000 sensors, including wind sensors);

 Developed the Maintenance Decision Support System, a computer-based decision 

support tool that enables state and local agencies to combat snow and ice more efficiently 

(and takes wind into account, especially with respect to blowing snow);

 Developed the first generation of a Vehicle Data Translator, a mobile sensing program 

that translates data coming from vehicles into valid road weather observations;

 Developed a planning tool to aid transportation agencies with the integration of weather 

information into the Traffic Management Center;

 Developed multiple training programs for a variety of audiences to better educate both 

the transportation and meteorological communities about the challenges of adverse 

weather on the surface transportation system; and

 Developed performance measures to assess the deployments of weather-responsive 

transportation management solutions, and collected data to assess these measures.

Power Grid, Aviation, and U.S. Space Centers

NOAA: High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Model. To improve guidance for air traffic managers, 

NOAA scientists at the ESRL/GSD developed and tested the HRRR weather forecast model. A 

component of the broader Rapid Update Cycle model, the HRRR is the only hourly-updated, 

radar-initialized, three-kilometer, storm-resolving model currently running in the U.S. It is 

designed to provide air traffic managers with rapidly updated projections of developing severe 

weather, and will also support NWS’s future WoF capability. During Fiscal Years 2009 and 

2010, NOAA scientists made several breakthroughs, including the development of an effective 

 

46 Bosch, H., Park, S., & Shen, J. (Pending). Mitigation of wind-induced vibration of stay cables: numerical 

simulations and evaluations. FHWA Staff Report, Report No. TBD, TFHRC, McLean, VA, Date TBD. 
41

technique for assimilating 3-D radar reflectivity data into the existing 13-km Rapid Update Cycle 

and an upcoming 13-km RAP model. 

NOAA: Hazardous Weather System for U.S. Space Centers. Operations at U.S. space centers 

are heavily dependent on weather conditions and forecasts. Safety regulations restrict work on 

tall gantries, shuttle transport, refueling, and other operations during high-wind events. Winds 

may also impact safety following rocket blasts, fuel spills, and other accidents by carrying toxins

from an accident zone farther afield. During the fiscal period, NOAA’s ESRL/GSD developed

and implemented a state-of-the-art analysis and forecasting system supporting the Eastern and 

Western Ranges as part of the RSA program. Due to advances by the program, NOAA now can 

deliver 24-, 12-, and nine-hour forecasts of varying spatial resolutions to address space center 

needs.

NOAA: Microburst Studies. NOAA’s NSSL maintained an ongoing program with the Arizonabased SRP, which provides electricity to the Phoenix metropolitan area, to study and document 

the impact of severe winds on electrical power infrastructure. During the summer of 2008, 140 

microburst windstorms were identified in Phoenix and the surrounding Sonoran Desert. The 

Sonoran microbursts were studied and examined for their frequency and characteristics, as 

observed from data collected from three Doppler radars and electrical power infrastructure 

damage reports. Stronger maximum differential wind velocities were observed more frequently 

in the Sonoran microbursts than in many previously documented microbursts. This is important 

because higher wind differentials can cause significantly more damage to electrical 

infrastructure. The observed greater frequency of higher wind differentials in the Sonoran 

microbursts than previously seen in other studies can imply that the vulnerability of the electrical 

infrastructure to microbursts in general has been significantly underestimated. Also, a 

comparison of the Doppler radar data to the wind damage reports found that the microburst 

winds caused more significant damage to electrical power infrastructure than gust-front winds.

Community Services and Resilience 

NSF: Development of a Quantitative Model for Measuring Regional Economic Resilience 

to Hurricanes. The NSF supported research at Texas Tech University to develop a quantitative 

model for measuring regional economic resilience to hurricane hazards. Developing an accurate 

picture of a region’s resilience requires measurements at multiple timescales of relevant 

indicators, including infrastructure reconstruction, mitigation activities, public disaster 

expenditures, local employment, housing permits, retail sales, and personal income. By 

integrating atmospheric properties of storms, physical attributes of a region's built environment,

and economic characteristics, the proposed model should be capable of forecasting the rate of 

recovery in a local economy at multiple timescales. Such forecasts – based on quantifiable and 

verifiable data – would support informed public policies and economic investment for 

vulnerability reduction and post-disaster recovery in hurricane-prone regions.

NSF: Managing Evacuee Ingress: Network Interactions and Community Hosting 

Performance. With funding from the NSF, a research team at the University of ColoradoDenver examined recent, major hurricane evacuations in Florida, Alabama, Texas, and 

Louisiana, and from its study developed an analytic framework to explain evacuation 

management performance. Prior research on disaster evacuations has focused on how and why
42

large numbers of people move out of disaster areas. In contrast, this project addresses how well 

communities can absorb and manage the needs of evacuees moving into their area. The study, 

which stands to improve disaster evacuation management practices in the United States, looks at 

how governmental agencies interact during evacuations with voluntary organizations, faith-based 

groups, and private-sector service providers like nursing homes. The potential impacts of the 

study include: 

 Improved planning and preparedness efforts through better understanding how 

communities perform in hosting incoming evacuees; 

 Improved planning and preparedness for helping those most vulnerable to the negative 

effects of an evacuation (e.g. elderly, disabled persons, lower income families); and 

 Enhanced graduate student and professional training in this area. 

The project also advances research frontiers by: 

 For the first time, providing systematic empirical evidence that accounts for how 

networks of governmental and nongovernmental organizations respond separately and in 

coordination on the issue of managing the needs of evacuees entering a hosting area; 

 Identifying and providing a framework for performance measures at a community level 

for how well the needs of evacuees are met when they move into a new area; and 

 Producing evidence that demonstrate which factors are most important for successfully 

managing the needs of evacuee ingress. 

NSF: Extreme Weather Events and Emergency Medical Services. Emergency medical 

dispatching protocols are typically designed for delivering services under normal weather 

conditions. In general, little guidance exists for how dispatching protocols may need to change 

under extreme weather conditions. With NSF funding, Virginia Commonwealth University 

developed new models and algorithms for improving the design and operation of emergency 

medical services (EMS) systems in response to medical emergencies that arise during extreme 

weather events. The research effort specifically focused on how EMS systems and protocols can 

be optimized for dispatching medical units to geographically dispersed patients during extreme 

weather events, as well as normal conditions. This effort is expected to provide a basis for more 

effective policies and protocols for allocating scarce EMS resources during both sets of 

conditions. 

NOAA: State of Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model. NOAA continued to work with the 

FPHLM during the 2009-2010 fiscal period. The FPHLM is an open, transparent computer

model that will be used by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation to provide a baseline for 

evaluating rate change requests for windstorm insurance. The FPHLM is the first such model 

that enables all of the results and details from the modeling approach to be open to scrutiny. (As 

of the end of the fiscal period, all other models used for ratemaking in Florida have been 

proprietary.) The model’s engineering component estimates damage to residential structures 

within Florida zip codes, and an actuarial component then estimates the insured loss. The 

average annual loss is then estimated statewide for every zip code in Florida. The FPHLM was 

approved by the Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology in June of 2009 

and is now available for insurance ratemaking purposes in Florida. 
43

FEMA: Maintain HAZUS Hurricane Loss Estimation Model. FEMA developed and 

maintained HAZUS-MH, a nationally applicable standardized methodology that contains models 

for estimating potential losses from multiple hazards, including hurricane winds. HAZUS-MH

uses GIS technology to estimate physical, economic, and social impacts of disasters and 

graphically illustrates the limits of identified high-risk locations due to a region’s hazards. Users 

can then visualize the spatial relationships between populations and other more permanently 

fixed geographic assets or resources for the specific hazard being modeled, a crucial function in 

the pre-disaster planning process. 

OUTREACH

FEMA: Education, Outreach, and Information Dissemination. The FEMA website, 

www.fema.gov, serves as the Nation's portal to emergency and disaster information. Most 

FEMA publications related to wind hazards were placed on the web, including many older 

documents that needed to be digitized in order to do so. Along with this digitization effort, a 

majority of FEMA wind and other hazard publications were uploaded to the Google Books 

website and are now available for download on the Google E-Reader and other electronic 

reading devices. Dozens of presentations were given at conferences and other forums 

highlighting the importance of hurricane mitigation, and a number of outreach documents were 

produced, highlighting successful wind mitigation projects. FEMA partnerships were established 

with external organizations such as the Disney Corporation and FLASH, which opened a new 

interactive exhibit titled “StormStruck: A Tale of Two Homes” at Epcot’s Innoventions 

pavilion. The attraction allows visitors to experience a severe weather incident, such as a 

hurricane, with the goal of teaching the guests about cutting-edge technology used to protect 

homes. Also, since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, FEMA’s Mitigation Directorate 

continued to help the residents of the Gulf Coast rebuild by providing support and resources. 

Researchers continue to analyze the data collected in the aftermath of the hurricane and apply the 

lessons learned in educating designers, decision-makers, and the public in order to positively 

influence ongoing recovery and rebuilding efforts. 

FEMA: Development of Technical Guidance Materials on State-of-the-Art Wind-Resistant 

Design and Construction Methods. Each year many thousands of publications dealing with 

wind hazards are ordered and distributed by FEMA. For example, FEMA partnered with Texas 

Tech University and others to produce guides and provisions for safe room design and 

construction (FEMA P-320: Taking Shelter from the Storm: Building a Safe Room For Your 

Home or Small Business and FEMA P-361: Design and Construction Guidance for Community 

Safe Rooms). During the fiscal period, more than 11,000 copies of FEMA P-320 and over 3,000 

copies of FEMA P-361 were distributed to organizations across the U.S. In Fiscal Year 2009, 

FEMA also revised a report outlining and identifying safe areas in buildings for protection 

during tornadoes (FEMA P-431 Tornado Protection: Selecting Refuge Areas in Buildings). 
44

APPENDIX B: AGENCY ACTIVITIES IN FISCAL YEARS 2007 

AND 2008

UNDERSTANDING WINDSTORMS FOR IMPROVED PREDICTIONS, FORECASTS, AND 

WARNINGS

Hurricanes

NIST: Storm Surge. NIST research on storm surge aims to provide a methodology for 

accurately characterizing the risk associated with combined hazards posed by extreme hurricane

wind and storm surge. The methodology will be used for developing design criteria for structures 

in coastal regions. The methodology takes into consideration the effects of local topography and 

bathymetry on which storm surge at any specific location is highly dependent, as well as the 

effects of waves, which add to total inundation. NIST is collaborating with NOAA’s NWS, 

OAR, and NHC, as well as the University of Florida to develop this methodology. 

NOAA: Shared Mobile Radars. Through a cooperative effort between the University of 

Oklahoma and NOAA, Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching Radars (SMART-R) 

were deployed during hurricane landfalls to collect and deliver wind data directly to forecast 

offices in real time. During Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008, one SMART-R was outfitted with dual 

polarization capability to better distinguish between hydrometeor types, estimate precipitation 

amount, and distinguish rain and hail from debris during tornadoes and other high wind events. 

NOAA’s NSSL also developed a new X-Band mobile Doppler radar for use in both research and 

operational aircraft to improve surface wind and vertical wind profiling over water during 

hurricanes. These radars are also used in NOAA’s operational hurricane model and for real-time 

hurricane intensity analysis.

NOAA: In situ Measurements of Turbulence in Hurricanes – Extreme Turbulence Probe. 

For a number of years, NOAA has been developing an Extreme Turbulence probe, a pressuresphere anemometer for measuring turbulence and fluxes in hurricanes. During Fiscal Years 2007 

and 2008, NOAA wrote and published a paper that described planned future upgrades to the 

probes.

47

NOAA: Hurricane Wind Analysis System. H*Wind, developed by the Hurricane Research 

Division of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, is a diagnostic tool 

that determines the extent of a tropical cyclone wind field. H*Wind is an integrated tropical 

cyclone observing system in which wind measurements from a variety of observation platforms 

can be used to develop an objective analysis of the distribution of wind speeds in a hurricane. 

The product is designed to improve the understanding of the extent and strength of the wind field 

and to improve the assessment of hurricane intensity. H*Wind “snapshot” products are provided 

in image and gridded form for research purposes and are useful for storm surge and wave 

 

47 Representative publication: Eckman, R.M., Dobosy, R. J., Auble, D.L., Strong, T. W., & Crawford, T.L. (2007). 

A pressure-sphere anemometer for measuring turbulence and fluxes in hurricanes. J. Atmos.Ocean. Technol., 24,

994-1007.
45

forecasting applications. Wind swath maps are also produced and are helpful for damage and 

loss assessment. In Fiscal Year 2007, 74 H*Wind analyses were produced, and an unprecedented 

276 analyses were produced in Fiscal Year 2008.

NOAA: Alternative Metrics of Tropical Cyclone Impact: Integrated Kinetic Energy and 

Surge/Wave Destructive Potential. The Hurricane Research Division of NOAA’s Atlantic 

Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, in partnership with external researchers and the 

IBHS, developed a new measure known as IKE to better capture the wind-related forces 

associated with a given storm. The IKE, which is computed from H*Wind gridded surface wind 

fields, represents a framework that captures the physical process of ocean surface stress forcing 

waves and surge while also taking into account structural wind loading and the spatial coverage 

of the wind. Starting in the 2007 hurricane season, the H*Wind analyses included information on 

IKE and surge/wave destructive potential.48

NOAA: State of Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model. NOAA continued to work with the 

FPHLM during the 2007-2008 reporting period. The FPHLM is an open, transparent computer 

model that will be used by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation to provide a baseline for 

evaluating rate change requests for windstorm insurance. The FPHLM is the first model that 

enables all of the results and details from the modeling approach to be open to scrutiny. To date, 

all other models used for ratemaking in Florida have been proprietary. 

NOAA: Improving Hurricane Risk Communication. In partnership with the NSF, NOAA cosponsored an extramural research competition titled, “Communicating Hurricane Information.” 

Grants awarded through this competition sought to improve the understanding of the social 

science elements of individual and community response to hurricane forecasts and warnings. 

Results from this research will: 1) aid NOAA and other Federal agencies in improving the 

design and delivery of hurricane and other severe storm-related products and services; and 2) 

assist in prioritizing future physical and social science research at NOAA. 

Tornadoes, Thunderstorms, and Other Severe Weather

NOAA: Hazardous Weather Testbed. NOAA’s NSSL and the NWS SPC work with numerical 

modeling centers throughout the agency to conduct collaborative experimental forecasting 

activities using the HWT. In Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008, the HWT was used to explore 

applications of very large domain (three-fourths of the continental U.S.), high-resolution (~4

kilometer grid length) Weather Research and Forecasting models and a 10-member Storm Scale 

Ensemble Forecast system for operational severe weather forecasting. Specialized fields, such as 

simulated radar reflectivity and lowest model-level wind speed, were developed to assess their 

potential to improve forecast guidance on damaging wind gusts generated during thunderstorms. 

Several high-resolution WRF models are run year-round to support operational severe weather 

 

48 Representative publication: Powell, M.D. & Reinhold, T.A. (2007). Tropical cyclone destructive potential by 

integrated kinetic energy. Bull. Amer. Meteo. Soc., 88, 513-526. Also: State of Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model 

(Project Lead: NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory)
46

forecasters. One such high-resolution model forecast correctly predicted a swath of damaging 

winds across parts of northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas in June 2008.

49

NOAA: Rapid Update Cycle. During Fiscal Year 2007, NOAA scientists at the ESRL/GSD 

improved the forecasting capabilities of the Rapid Update Cycle model. This hourly assimilation 

and atmospheric prediction model is used by the SPC for near-real-time analysis and predictions 

of severe storm conditions over the continental U.S., Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and the northern 

Caribbean. The model assimilates information from a variety of sources, including surface 

observations, aircraft sensors, and radar and satellite data. The assimilation of radar reflectivity 

data in Fiscal Year 2007 provided significant improvements for the prediction of severe weather. 

Further enhancements to the model in Fiscal Year 2008 led to improved assimilation of cloud 

and visibility information, forecasts of wind gusts, and forecasts of precipitation type.50

NOAA: High-Resolution Rapid Refresh. To improve severe weather guidance and air traffic 

management, NOAA scientists at the ESRL/GSD worked during Fiscal Year 2008 to develop 

and test the HRRR model. The HRRR model, which is nested within the Rapid Update Cycle 

model, is the only hourly updated, radar-initialized, 3-kilometer, storm-resolving model currently 

running in the U.S. It is designed to provide rapidly updated model guidance on convective 

storms for air traffic management, severe weather forecasting, and the NWS’s future WoF

capability.

NOAA: Large-Scale Influences on Seasonal Severe Weather Behavior. NOAA has an 

ongoing mission to develop a severe weather database to empirically estimate wind hazards

across the continental U.S. During Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008, the NWS SPC continued to 

develop hazard estimates as a function of the various Global Climate Cycles. This ongoing 

research may permit NOAA to provide risk assessments that vary as a function of climate 

indices.51

NOAA: Reducing Wind-Induced Damages. With funding from NOAA, Iowa State University 

collected wind data in the vicinity of tornadoes for verification and calibration of a wind 

simulation and testing tornado simulator. Additional tasks undertaken by Iowa State in Fiscal 

Years 2007 and 2008 included: 

 Initial work to simulate hurricane winds around built structures;

 Modeling tornadic winds near a “rough” surface in a tornado simulator;

 

49 Representative publications: Coniglio, M.C., Kain, J.S., Weiss, S.J., Bright, D.R., Levit, J.J., Carbin, G.W., 

Thomas, K.W., Kong, F., Xue, M., Weisman, M.L., & Pyle, M.E. (2008). Evaluation of WRF model output for 

severe-weather forecasting from the 2008 NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Experiment. Preprints, 24th 

Conference on Severe Local Storms, Amer. Meteor. Soc., Savannah, GA. CD-ROM 12.4. Also: Weisman, M.L., 

Davis, C., Wang, W., Manning, K.W., & Klemp, J.B. (2008). Experiences with 0–36-h explicit convective forecasts 

with the WRF-ARW model. Wea. Forecasting, 23, 407–437.

50 Representative publications: Smith, T.L., Benjamin, S.G., Gutman, S.I., & Sahm, S. (2007). Short-range forecast 

impact from assimilation of GPS-IPW observations into the Rapid Update Cycle. Monthly Weather Review, 135, 

2914-2930. Also: Lu, C., Yuan, H., Schwartz, B.E., & Benjamin, S.G. (2007). Short-range numerical weather 

prediction using time-lagged ensembles. Weather and Forecasting, 22, 580-595.

51 Representative publications: Cook, A.R., & Schaefer, J.T. (2008). The Relation of El Niño Southern Oscillation 

(ENSO) to winter tornado activity. Monthly Weather Review, 136, 3121-3137.
47

 Simulating straight-wind and tornado flow fields in and around different types and 

configurations of buildings and vegetative barriers;

 Assessing wind damage potential of buildings as a function of distribution of local wind 

speed and wind-borne debris impacts;

 Studying the optimum shelterbelt configuration to reduce hurricane wind hazard to cities 

along coastal areas; and

 Investigating a new aerodynamic shape of an extreme-wind resistant residential 

building.52

NSF: Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2. VORTEX2 is an 

NSF and NOAA effort being planned to investigate tornadogenesis, tornado structure, and the 

relationships between tornados and their parent thunderstorms in the larger-scale environment. 

The experiment will involve a large, multi-investigator field campaign and a number of mobile 

radars, atmospheric sounding systems, and ground based sensors during the spring of Fiscal 

Years 2009 and 2010.

NSF: Windstorm Damage Assessments. During the fiscal period, the NSF funded teams to 

assess structural damage in areas impacted by windstorms. These studies were valuable for 

identifying specific anecdotal damage examples as well as issues that require further study. The 

NSF also funded research to develop models for measuring storm surge and wave actions 

generated by severe storms and hurricanes. Other research focused on detailed wind tunnel 

studies of structures under a variety of wind environments to determine the adequacy of current 

design and modeling approaches. Social science research at NSF supported quick-response 

research efforts to assess community damages, infrastructure disruption, and individual, 

organizational, and community social, political and economic impacts. The goal of the research 

was to develop damage assessment tools for use by emergency response officials. The NSF also 

awarded funding to Texas Tech University for research on the utilization of remote hyperspectral 

imaging technology for rapid assessment of damage caused by hurricane winds. The research is 

expected to produce much more efficient damage assessments than manual investigations, which 

can be time consuming, subjective, and expensive. The new methods under development through 

this research are also expected to provide useful data for risk assessments by insurers and for 

response and recovery planning by public agencies.

NSF: The Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. CASA, an NSFfunded Engineering Research Center led by the University of Massachusetts, sought to 

dramatically increase the warning time and forecast accuracy for tornadoes and other windrelated severe weather hazards. CASA’s research introduced a new dimension to weather 

forecasting and warning, yielding novel capabilities, including the detection of tornado 

precursors that were not fully resolved by the operational Doppler radar network.

 

52 Representative publications: Karstens, C.D. & Gallus, Jr., W.A. (2008). Simulations of near-ground hurricane 

winds influenced by built structures. Extended Abstracts, 28th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, 

Orlando, Florida: Amer. Meteor. Soc. Also: Sengupta, A., Haan, F.L., Sarkar, P.P., & Balaramudu, V. (2008). 

Transient loads on buildings in microburst and tornado winds. J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerodyn., 

dio:10.1016/j.jweia.2008.02.050.
48

NSF: Social Science Interdisciplinary Research. The NSF has a long history of supporting 

social science research on risk communication; warning systems and processes; evacuation 

planning and effectiveness; and individual, organizational, and community protective actions 

undertaken prior to a severe weather impact. For example, the NSF has supported research on 

factors facilitating societal adoption of structural and non-structural mitigation measures for over 

two decades. Research funded by the NSF has also focused on elements of community 

preparedness and capabilities, such as improving understanding of windstorm hazards;

developing tools to measure social vulnerability and damage assessment; and developing tools to 

measure household, business and community recovery from wind disasters. The Human and 

Social Dynamics Priority Area at NSF funded significant interdisciplinary evacuation research 

related to wind hazards in Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008. Examples include:

 “Collaborative Proposal: DRU: Incorporating Household Decision Making and Dynamic 

Transportation Modeling in Hurricane Evacuation: An Integrated Social ScienceEngineering Approach.” 

 “Collaborative Proposal: From Warnings to Dynamic Hurricane Evacuation Modeling: 

an Integrated Social Science-Engineering Perspective.” 

In Fiscal Year 2008, the Infrastructure Management and Extreme Events Program in the 

Engineering Directorate, and the Decision, Risk and Management Sciences Program in the 

Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate (with support from NOAA) ran a special 

competition entitled “Communicating Hurricane Information.” Sample awards from this 

competition include:

 “Collaborative Research: Understanding Dynamic Responses to Hurricane Warnings –

Implications for Communication and Research.” 

 “Collaborative Research: Examining the Hurricane Warning System: Content, Channels, 

and Comprehension.”

 “Communicating Forecast Information to Optimize Evacuation Behavior.”

ASSESSING AND REDUCING WINDSTORM IMPACTS

Buildings and Structures

NIST: Wind Engineering. In Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008, NIST’s wind engineering research 

was focused on developing the measurement science tools and methodologies necessary to 

substantially improve: 1) wind hazard prediction through better databases and maps; 2) the 

estimation of wind loads on structures through the development of database-assisted design 

techniques that incorporate wind directionality effect (which was determined by the World Trade 

Center investigation to be a source of major errors in current practices); and 3) the prediction of 

the structural responses to these loads, leading to safer and more economical designs with 

reduced embodied energy. In addition to performing research, NIST has voting memberships in 

the ASCE 7 Subcommittee on Wind Loads and the ASCE 7 Main Committee, and is represented 

on the ASCE 7 Loads Committee (ASCE 7 is the standard for minimum design loads for 

buildings and other structures and is the basis for provisions in model building codes used 

throughout the U.S.). During Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008, NIST developed powerful and 

comprehensive database-assisted design procedures that substantially improve modeling of wind 

effects on both low- and high-rise structures. The procedures incorporate:
49

 Novel synchronous pressure measurement technologies capable of capturing the 

imperfect spatial coherence of pressures on the building facades;

 Modern computational capabilities such as wavelet-based data compression techniques 

that enable the use of large datasets by design practitioners; 

 Findings based on NIST-led investigations that established the need to improve the 

physical and probabilistic modeling of design criteria, including a world-wide interlaboratory comparison of wind effects estimates;

 Multi-hazard approaches to developing mixed probability distributions (frequency and 

maximum wind speeds) of hurricanes, large-scale extra-tropical storms, thunderstorm 

winds, and to wind and seismic effects;

 Innovative methods for establishing previously unknown strength reserves of deformed 

structures under wind loads;

 More accurate, transparent, and user-friendly approaches for calculating wind effects on 

tall buildings, which was made possible by the capability to solve simultaneously 

differential equations of dynamic motion, replacing obsolete and impractical spectral 

methods developed in the 1960’s;

 Novel probabilistic approaches to establishing design values consistent with acceptable 

reliability levels; and

 Relations between the Saffir-Simpson hurricane classification and specified wind speeds 

required in the design process.

The procedures and data developed by NIST were posted on the NIST website at 

http://www.nist.gov/wind. Procedures developed by NIST in Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008 led to 

the changes in the ASCE 7 standards, which were approved by the ASCE 7 Wind Loads 

Subcommittee to address: 

 The application in engineering practice of database-assisted design;

 The relationship between the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Intensity Scale and the design 

wind speeds for buildings and other structures; and

 Accounting for wind directionality effects in structural design. 

Further, NIST provided comments aimed at substantively improving the draft ASCE standard for 

wind tunnel testing and, through publications and mechanisms afforded by NIST participation in 

professional entities, actively promoted the adoption of the requisite improvements in the draft 

standards. 

NSF: Structural Engineering Research and Development. The development of improved 

modeling of wind effects on structures was a primary outcome of NSF-funded structural 

engineering research in Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008. Design standards, such as ASCE 7, have 

benefited greatly from Federally-funded research into wind and its effects on structures. The 

current version of these consensus standards is more comprehensive than previous versions due 

to these contributions. Training the next generation of wind engineers was another important 

objective of the NSF in Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008. As the modern generation of wind 

engineers retires over the next decade, there will be an urgent need to ensure continuity of 

knowledge and expertise through continued training of young engineers. Within this context, the 

NSF’s support for universities engaged in wind engineering research is a key component to 
50

building and supporting the next generation of engineers in this valuable discipline. The NSF 

funded research at the University of Florida to define the distribution of hurricane-induced wind 

loads on low-rise structures. The project will use wind tunnel and experimental data from tests 

on a 1/3-scale model of a wood-frame residential structure. The research is expected to improve 

the performance-based design methods for low-rise, wood-frame buildings by identifying ways 

to distribute and reduce wind load on the structures. 

FHWA/NIST/NOAA/NSF: U.S.-Japan Panel on Wind and Seismic Effects. FHWA, NIST, 

NOAA, and the NSF all participated on the U.S.-Japan Panel on Wind and Seismic Effects in 

Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008. NIST chaired and provided a technical secretariat for the panel, 

which serves as a mechanism for the exchange of technical data, information, and researchers, as 

well as the coordination of joint research on wind and seismic-related topics of mutual interest to 

the U.S. and Japan. FHWA co-sponsors the panel, and FHWA staff members actively 

participated on its wind engineering task committees (TC), especially TC-D Wind Engineering 

and TC-G Transportation in Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008. USACE also participated in the panel 

during the reporting period. 

Bridges and Highways

NSF: Assessing Bridge Performance Against Extreme Wind. The NSF awarded funding to 

Oregon State University for research on the effects of hurricane-induced waves on low-lying 

highway bridges in coastal areas. The research will focus on the hydraulic-structure interaction 

during hurricane-induced wave loads to better define the wave loads on bridge structures. The 

results of this research are expected to provide new insights into the failure mechanisms of 

highway bridges subjected to hurricane wave loads, as exemplified by the bridge failures along 

the U.S. Gulf Coast Region during Hurricanes Ivan in 2004 and Katrina in 2005. The better 

understanding of wave characteristics and bridge response expected from this research should

provide tools for engineers to evaluate the risk of failure for existing bridges and to design new 

and retrofit existing bridges to withstand these loads. Researchers at Texas Tech University 

received funding from the NSF to develop advanced methods for performance assessment and 

reliability-based risk consistent designs of long-span bridges subjected to damaging winds. The 

research aims to define improved wind force models, which would reduce the complexity of the 

current linear force model and efficiently describe nonlinear, unsteady force characteristics. The 

project will utilize wind tunnel testing data, full-scale monitoring of bridge responses to strong 

winds, and field data provided by international collaborators. The project deliverables include a 

new wind load effects model, an approach for modeling of parameter uncertainties, a 

methodology for assessing uncertainty of bridge response, and analysis tools for the design of 

wind-excited bridges.

FHWA: Monitoring of Wind Conditions and Structural Performance. The FHWA HRDI

continued to monitor winds and structural performance at select bridge sites to establish and 

characterize site-specific wind conditions and the responses of the bridges to wind hazards. The 

sites of three major long-span, cable-supported bridges were monitored during Fiscal Years 2007 

and 2008. Data was collected on a continuous basis and included information obtained during 

severe storms such as Hurricanes Gustav, Ike, and Kyle. The data gathered during this period

provided valuable information for the calibration of numerical tools and predictive methods, the 

improvement of physical modeling techniques in the laboratory, the evaluation and validation of 
51

new designs, and the development and assessment of mitigation measures.

FHWA: Full-Scale Measurement of Structural Dynamic Properties. In an ongoing program 

to characterize the dynamic properties of bridge stay cables that are critical to structural 

performance and aerodynamic stability, full-scale forced vibration tests on selected major 

structures continued during the period. Cable tests were performed on the new Penobscot 

Narrows Bridge prior to opening of the bridge in 2006 and following installation of dampers on 

the cables in 2007.

53

 Information collected during the tests enabled an evaluation of design 

details and an assessment of the effectiveness of various mitigation measures such as dampers, 

cross ties, and aerodynamic surface treatments. The information also is a benchmark that will be 

useful during later inspections to assess structural condition or health.

FHWA: Physical Modeling of Wind Effects on Highway Structures. During the fiscal period, 

analysis of wind force measurements on a series of generic bridge deck sections in the FHWA 

wind tunnel was completed.

54

 Other efforts included an initiative by FHWA’s EAR program to 

develop a new system to perform volumetric particle image velocimetry. This will enable 

detailed flow visualization during a laboratory study of fluid-structure interaction. This new 

technology will be a valuable tool in performing aerodynamic studies of wind effects on highway 

structures as well as hydraulic issues associated with scour and storm surge. An additional

project set to begin under the EAR program will develop a system using pressure-sensitive paint 

and surface-stress-sensitive film to measure wind forces on structural models in the laboratory. 

Also, automation of both wind tunnels in the Aerodynamics Laboratory at TFHRC is nearly 

complete.

FHWA: Numerical Modeling of Wind Effects on Highway Structures. Enhancement of the 

UABRIM (University of Arkansas BRIdge Moving) computational fluid dynamics model 

continued in Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008 with the implementation of unstructured and adaptive 

grids to simulate the interaction between wind and large bridges55. This computer simulation tool 

can be used to evaluate wind flow around, and interaction with, major highway bridges. It also 

can identify undesirable tendencies for vortex-induced response, or “flutter” instability. Finite 

element modeling using the commercial structural design program SAP 2000 was performed to 

study the efficacy of various approaches for mitigating wind-induced vibration of bridge stay 

cables.56 FHWA’s Non-Destructive Evaluation Center at TFHRC continued research to develop 

Chaos Theory Analysis of Bridge Response (CTBR) software for bridge structural health 

monitoring.57 As part of this work, the fractal interpolation algorithm was incorporated into the 

 

53 Bosch, H.R., Pagenkopf, J.R., and Park, S., “Measurement of Dynamic Properties of Bridge Stay Cables,” 

Proceedings, 7th International Symposium on Cable Dynamics, Vienna, Austria, December 2007.

54 Bosch, H. R., & Dhall, T. (2008). Aerodynamic investigation of generic bridge deck section models. Proceedings, 

6

th International Colloquium on Bluff Body Aerodynamics and Applications, Milan, Italy, July.

55 Patro, S. K., Selvam, R. P., & Bosch, H. R. (2008). Bridge aerodynamics using h-Adaptive FEM and moving 

grids. Proceedings, 1st AAWE Workshop on Wind Engineering, Vail, Colorado, August. 

56 Bosch, H., Park, S., & Shen, J. (2007). Mitigation of stay cable vibrations using crossties and dampers.

Proceedings, 12th International Conference on Wind Engineering, Cairns, Australia, July. 

57 Livingston, R.A., & Jin, S. (2007). Application of chaos theory to evaluate possible instability conditions in cablestayed bridges. Proceedings, 18th Engineering Mechanics Division Conference of American Society of Civil 

Engineering (EMD 2007), June, Blacksburg, Virginia.
52

CTBR software to improve the Probability Density Function computation from bridge chaotic 

response data. The work included enhancements to the analysis, graphics and input/output 

functions of the CTBR software. Development of a user’s guide and analysis of data sets from 

bridge health monitoring systems will be part of the continuing work. The Non-Destructive 

Evaluation Center also purchased a Thinkmate parallel computer that has access to ANL’s 

TRACC high performance computing facilities for performing large-scale simulations of 

structural dynamics problems through finite element modeling. This new resource will enable 

detailed simulation and study of the effects of wind loads, wind/rain interaction, earthquakes, and 

traffic loads on major highway structures.

FHWA: Development of Design Guidelines. Research continued in Fiscal Years 2007 and 

2008 on the issue of wind- and wind/rain-induced vibration of bridge stay cables. Version 2 of a 

draft guidelines document has been developed for the aerodynamic design of bridge stay cables. 

This document was under review at the end of Fiscal Year 2008 and will provide guidance on the 

aerodynamic design of cables and cable networks for major new highway bridges as well as for 

retrofit of existing structures to mitigate wind-induced vibration problems.

Power Grid, Aviation, and U.S. Space Centers

NOAA: Hazardous Weather System for U.S. Space Centers. Operations at U.S. space centers

are heavily dependent on atmospheric conditions and weather forecasts. During Fiscal Years 

2007 and 2008, NOAA’s ESRL/GSD continued to develop and implement a state-of-the-art 

analysis and forecasting system supporting the Eastern and Western Ranges as part of the RSA 

Project. 

Community Services and Resilience 

FEMA: Mitigation Assessment Team Evaluations Following Major Hurricanes, Tornadoes 

and Windstorms. In Fiscal Year 2007, a FEMA MAT effort was undertaken to respond to a

tornado that struck the town of Greensburg, Kansas and destroyed or severely damaged 90

percent of the community’s buildings. Among the observations and recommendations that came 

out of the investigation was the need for sufficient numbers of individual and community safe 

rooms to protect the lives of the citizens from future tornado impacts. FEMA also responded to 

Hurricane Ike by deploying a MAT team to study of effects of this devastating hurricane on 

Galveston, Texas, including the area known as the Bolivar Peninsula, which was particularly 

hard hit. The team was sent to evaluate and assess damage from that storm and provide 

observations on the performance of structures impacted by flood and wind forces. The team will 

develop recommendations for improved disaster resistant construction based on best-available 

practices and science. The report from that field investigation was under development as Fiscal 

Year 2008 ended but will contain a number of important recommendations, including the need to 

sufficiently elevate coastal structures to withstand the effects of hurricane storm surge and the 

importance of adopting and enforcing disaster-resistant building codes and wind provisions. 

FEMA’s Mitigation Directorate continued to help the residents of the Gulf Coast rebuild from 

the 2005 hurricane season by providing support and resources during Fiscal Years 2007 and 

2008. As part of this effort, FEMA continued to educate designers, decision-makers, and the 

public to positively influence ongoing recovery and rebuilding efforts. FEMA also provided 
53

ongoing support for those impacted by Hurricane Katrina through technical guidance, support for 

housing pilot programs, and mitigation assistance grants totaling more than $1 billion. 

OUTREACH

FEMA: Education, Outreach, and Information Dissemination. Each year thousands of 

publications dealing with hazards are ordered and distributed free of charge by FEMA. Over 

750,000 copies of Taking Shelter from the Storm (FEMA 320) have been distributed and over 

30,000 copies of a FEMA guidance document on state-of-the-art building practices in the Gulf 

Coast Region have been sent out since Hurricane Katrina. Also, a multi-year initiative to develop 

a consensus standard for tornado and hurricane safe rooms for residences, businesses, and 

communities was completed in Fiscal Year 2008 and adopted by the ICC. The FEMA website

serves as the Nation's portal to emergency and disaster information. Most FEMA publications 

related to wind hazards have now been placed on the web, including digitized versions of older 

documents that were previously unavailable electronically.
54

APPENDIX C: KEY ABBREVIATIONS

AOML Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory

AWIPS Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System

ABM Agent Base Modeling

ANL Argonne National Laboratory

ASCE American Society of Civil Engineers

CASA Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere

CFD Computational Fluid Dynamics

CTBR Chaos Theory Analysis of Bridge Response

DOE Department of Energy

DOT Department of Transportation

EAR Exploratory Advanced Research

EF Enhanced Fujita

EMS Emergency Medical Services

ESRL/GSD Earth Systems Research Laboratory Global Systems Division

FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency

FHWA Federal Highway Administration

FLASH Federal Alliance for Safe Homes

FPHLM Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model

GIS Geographic Information System

GOES-R Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite – R Series

GPS Global Positioning System

GRIP Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes

HAZUS-MH Hazards U.S. Multi-Hazard

HFIP Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project

HRD Hurricane Research Division

HRDI [FHWA] Office of Infrastructure Research and Development

HRRR High-Resolution Rapid Refresh

HWT Hazardous Weather Testbed

H*Wind Hurricane Winds Analysis System

IBC International Building Code

IBHS Institute for Business and Home Safety

ICC International Code Council

IRC International Residential Code

IFEX Intensity Forecasting Experiment

IKE Integrated Kinetic Energy

IWG Interagency Working Group 

JHT Joint Hurricane Testbed

MAT Mitigation Assessment Team

MPAR Multi-Function Phased Array Radar

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NCAR National Center for Atmospheric Research

NCST National Construction Safety Team

NDE Non-Destructive Evaluation 

NHC National Hurricane Center

NHI National Highway Institute

NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology

NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission

NRCC National Research Council of Canada

NSF National Science Foundation

NSSA National Storm Shelter Association

NSSL National Severe Storms Laboratory
55

NSTC National Science and Technology Council

NWIRA National Windstorm Impact Reduction Act

NWIRP National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program

NWS National Weather Service

OAR Oceanic and Atmospheric Research

OSTP White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

PREDICT PRE-Depression Investigation of Cloud-Systems in the Tropics

RAP Rapid Refresh

RHPS Roadway Wind/Solar Hybrid Power Generation and Distribution System

RSA Range Standardization and Automation

SDR Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction 

SHAVE Severe Hazard Algorithm Verification Experiment

SLOSH Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes

SPA-10 Storm-Penetrating A-10

SPC Storm Prediction Center

SRP Salt River Project

TAC Technical Advisory Committee

TC Tropical Cyclone

TFHRC Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center 

TRACC Transportation Research and Analysis Computing Center

TRB Transportation Research Board

USACE United States Army Corps of Engineers

VORTEX2 Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2

WoF Warn-on-Forecast

WRN Weather-Ready Nation