Rapid Cost Estimation for Storm Recovery Using Geographic Information System by Rolando A. Berríos-Montero B.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering, June 1998, The Ohio State University M.S. in Engineering Management, June 2001, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico B.S. in Civil Engineering, June 2012, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico M.S. in Economics, June 2014, University of Puerto Rico A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The School of Engineering and Applied Science of The George Washington University in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 15th , 2016 Dissertation directed by Jason Dever Professional Lecturer of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering and Steven M. F. Stuban Professional Lecturer of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering The School of Engineering and Applied Science of The George Washington University certifies that Rolando A. Berríos-Montero has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of March 18 th , 2016. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Rapid Cost Estimation for Storm Recovery Using Geographic Information System Rolando A. Berríos-Montero Dissertation Research Committee: Shahram Sarkani, Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Dissertation Co-Director Thomas Mazzuchi, Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering & Decision Sciences, Dissertation Co-Director Steven M. F. Stuban, Professorial Lecturer in Engineering Management and System Engineering, Committee Member Pavel Fomin, Professorial Lecturer in Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Committee Member E. Lile Murphree, Professor Emeritus of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Committee Member ii ©Copyright 2016 by Rolando A. Berríos-Montero All rights reserved iii Dedication To my beloved wife Ana Ligia and my daughter Ana Cristina… “…, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.” James Thomas Anthony "Jim" Valvano (March 4 th , 1993) …because this is how the three of us live every day. iv Acknowledgments I am deeply appreciative of my mother, father and my sister for their continued interest and support of my doctoral journey. I would like to express my gratitude to my advisors Dr. Stuban and Dr. Dever for their positive guidance and patience. Their direction and feedback really gave me insight and motivation to continue on this journey. I am grateful to my classmates who constantly checked on my progress over the last two years. A special thanks to George Wilamowski and Thembani Togwe for caring and for all the influential discussions and support toward the dissertation path. Their support made the world of difference. v Abstract Rapid Cost Estimation for Storm Recovery Using Geographic Information System The present research introduces a new approach to estimate the recovery costs of public property in the aftermath of a storm, by integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Estimating recovery costs for a disaster is a current concern for emergency responders. This work focuses on applying economic indicators, population data, and storm event tracking to GIS for rapidly estimating recovery costs. Firstly, recovery costs of historical events are normalized and adjusted for inflation, wealth, and population. Geospatial analysis is used to predict, manage, and learn political boundaries and population density. Secondly, rapid recovery cost estimation is accomplished by defining population, personal income, and gross domestic product. Finally, a jurisdiction fiscal capacity (JFC) is calculated illustrating the economic capability of jurisdictions to finance public property recovery, based on their economy size. The variability of estimated absolute errors between cost estimates and actual normalized costs are also examined. The results reveal that JFC is a more suitable metric for rapidly estimating recovery costs of public properties than the method presently followed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This new approach effectively aids the local government in providing quick cost guidance to recovery responders, while offering the ability to construct accurate recovery cost estimates. vi Table of Contents Dedication ......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Abstract ............................................................................................................................. vi Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. vii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. ix List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xi List of Acronyms ............................................................................................................. xii Chapter 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Systems Engineering Cost Estimation ................................................................. 1 1.2 Problem Statement ................................................................................................. 2 1.3 Purpose .................................................................................................................... 3 1.4 Approach ................................................................................................................. 4 1.5 Significance ............................................................................................................ 7 1.6 Limitation ................................................................................................................ 7 1.7 Outline ..................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2. Literature Review ......................................................................................... 10 2.1 Actual cost estimation models ............................................................................ 10 2.1.1 Components of actual cost estimating models .......................................... 12 2.1.2 Florida public hurricane loss projection model ........................................ 16 2.2 Cost estimation........................................................................................................ 19 2.3 GIS-based cost estimate .......................................................................................... 22 Chapter 3. Data ................................................................................................................. 29 3.1 Storms ..................................................................................................................... 30 3.2 Historical recovery cost .......................................................................................... 32 3.3 Population and economic indicators ....................................................................... 32 vii Chapter 4. Methodology ................................................................................................... 35 4.1 Methodology approach ........................................................................................... 35 4.2 Storm analysis ......................................................................................................... 38 4.3 Normalized Cost ..................................................................................................... 42 4.4 Jurisdiction fiscal capacity ...................................................................................... 43 4.5 Recovery cost estimation ........................................................................................ 44 Chapter 5. Results and Analysis ....................................................................................... 48 5.1 Mahalanobis Distance (MD) ................................................................................... 52 5.2 Hurricane Georges as outlier .................................................................................. 56 5.3 Median absolute deviation (MAD) ......................................................................... 58 5.4 GIS output ............................................................................................................... 71 5.5 Cost exceedance probability ................................................................................... 82 5.5.1 Random sampling methodology ...................................................................... 83 5.6 Log-normal distribution .......................................................................................... 86 Chapter 6. Conclusion ......................................................................................................