Damage functions from FEMA's HAZUS software for use in modeling
financial losses from natural disasters
Description
Damage Functions (DFs), also known as
Vulnerability Functions, associate the physical damage
to a building or a structure (and also its contents and
inventory) from natural disasters to financial damage.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in USA
developed several thousand DFs and these serve as a
benchmark in natural catastrophe modeling, both in
academia and industry. However, these DFs and their
documentation are buried within the HAZUS software are
not easily accessible for analysis and visualization.
This package provides more than 1300 raw DFs used by FEMA's
HAZUS software and also functionality to extract and
visualize DFs specific to the flood hazard. The vignette
included with this package demonstrates its use.