Benefit-cost assessment of potential hurricane modification

 

Fig 5: Illustration of some early results obtained for damage estimates using the HAZUS model and modifying the historical track of hurricane Wilma.A: 10°cc rotation, B:10°c rotation, C: Δ -10% wind speed, D: Δ ±10% wind speed. Impact of storm surge not included.

Fig 5: Illustration of some early results obtained for damage estimates using the HAZUS model and modifying the historical track of hurricane Wilma.
A: 10°cc rotation, B:10°c rotation, C: Δ -10% wind speed, D: Δ ±10% wind speed. Impact of storm surge not included.

The problem:
Given the growing exposure to losses from hurricanes, and the potential the climate change may exacerbate future exposure, a number of people in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have recently begun talking about restarting research on hurricane modification. The last effort, “Project Stormfury,” began in 1962 and ended in 1983 after decidedly unimpressive results. Even if DHS loses interest in this topic, others are likely to become interested if and when climate change leads to dramatic changes in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones

The research:
With Morgan and Grossmann, CDMC Ph.D. student Kelly Klima has undertaken a technical review of the modification options and is in the early stages of performing a decision analytic assessment designed to explore three questions:

  1. how much of a change might foreseeable types of interventions produce, and if these changes played out exactly as anticipated, how much might they reduce damages?;
  2. given that there will inevitably be uncertainty associated with the outcome of any intervention, how much must that uncertainty be reduced before one could be confident that the intervention would have a positive net benefit?; and
  3. is it scientifically plausible that uncertainties could be reduced by this amount?

We will build a family of decision-analytic models to examine these questions.  Later we may also be able to apply ideas from real options and from robust decision making.  We believe that these applications will stretch available tools and require extensions or development of new methods.  This problem (along with the geoengineering work outlined below in Section 2.16) also raises potential moral issues as well as legal questions involving liability.  The latter will be addressed with our collaborators at Vermont Law School.

The decision makers:
FIU, FPL, IRGC, Munich Re, NRDC, and an indication from the National Hurricane Center of a willingness to share data.  Klima is also working with the Florida State and Miami-Dade Offices of Emergency Management.