Modeling the Effectiveness of Hurricane Preparedness Damage Mitigation Strategies in Southeastern Virginia

September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina have recently demonstrated that American preparedness and disaster response efforts require improvements. Locally, the Southeastern region of Virginia is at risk for a major hurricane which could cost billions of dollars in damage. This project seeks to provide information to decision makers about the risks and tradeoffs involved in preparedness and response to a major hurricane. This project uses the HAZUS disaster modeling tool with other tools and models to analyze the decision options of evacuation, boarding up windows, and taking no action. The results of the analysis show that an evacuation for a 100-year storm would cost over SI billion more than sheltering in place, although may cost more lives. Boarding up a fraction of windows does reduce damage. If this conclusion continues to be supported, Virginia policy makers need to focus their efforts and money on contingent emergency supply chains rather than on complicated lateral evacuation plans.