Residential building flood damage: Insights on processes and implications for risk assessments

The present study has two main objectives. First, demonstrate a novel on-site damage assessment approachto develop an object-based empirical damage database for New Zealand residential buildings from five flood events from 2013 to 2017. Second, analyse empirical damage data using a non-linear model and correlation tests to determine the importance and relationships of variables influencing the direct physical damage of residential buildings. Flood damage assessments provide critical insights on processes controllingbuilding damage and loss.

Object-level damage data was collected for flood hazard and building characteristics, along with relative building component and sub-components damage ratios. The empirical damage data has several implications for damage model development due to the limited heterogeneity of flood hazard intensities and building attributes observed. Extending empirical damage data with synthetic damage data in future would support development of more rep-resentative object-specific damage models to evaluate direct tangible damagesfor local contexts.