An alarming increase in population has occured along coastlines of the United States over the last few decades. Coupled with the increase in population, personal material wealth has also been on the rise. These two factors result in a population which is increasingly vulnerable to the hurricane threat. Many of these people have never experienced
a hurricane.
If changes in inflation, wealth, and population can be used to normalize historical damage from particular hurricanes (Pielke and Landsea, 1998), then it is possible to construct a hurricane vulnerability index using similar factors. This vulnerability index can be used to estimate the relative change in damage a storm of a given magnitude would have over the years. Here we examine the vulnerability index for coastal counties from Texas to Maine. Under this analysis, counties in western and southern Florida are particularly vulnerable in the face of another hurricane Andrew.
REFERENCE
Pielke, R. A., Jr., and C. W. Landsea, 1998: Normalized hurricane damages in the United States: 1925--1995. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 79, in press