Storm Warning: Managing the Risk of Increasing Hurricane Catastrophes 

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Text, Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) Webinar Series. 

A laptop on a desk with Wednesdays with Woodward webinar series on the screen, flanked by a small potted plant and a red mug with the white Travelers umbrella logo. Joan Woodward's video feed appears in the upper right corner of the screen. She is seated in an office and speaks to camera.

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JOAN WOODWARD: Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you so much for joining us. I'm Joan Woodward, and I'm honored to lead the Travelers Institute, which is a public policy division and educational arm of Travelers. Welcome to Wednesdays with Woodward, a webinar series where we convene leading experts for conversations about today's really biggest challenges. 

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New slide. Text, About Travelers Institute (registered trademark) Webinars. The Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) educational webinar series is presented by the Travelers Institute, the public policy division of Travelers. This program is offered for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with your financial, legal, insurance or other advisors about any practices suggested by this program. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as Travelers deems appropriate. Logos: Travelers Institute (registered trademark). Travelers. 

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So before we get started, I'd like to share, as I always do, our disclaimer about today's program. 

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New slide. Text, Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) Webinar Series. Storm Warning: Managing the Risk of Increasing Hurricane Catastrophes. Logos: University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business, Travelers Institute (registered trademark) Travelers, MetroHartford Alliance, C.B.I.A., UCONN School of Business MS in Financial Technology, Insurance Association of Connecticut. 

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Also, a big thanks to our partners today who help make this program possible. The Master’s in FinTech Program at UConn, the Insurance Association of Connecticut, the Risk and Uncertainty Management Center at the University of South Carolina's Darla Moore School of Business, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, and the MetroHartford Alliance. So welcome to all the members, students and alumni joining us today from those groups.

As many of you know, September does mark the peak of Atlantic hurricane season, which runs through November the 30th. So far this year, we've had 13 named storms, five hurricanes, three of which became major hurricanes. With one hurricane, Idalia, making landfall in North Florida. Last year right around this time, Hurricane Ian slammed into the west coast of Florida, leaving a devastatingly amount of damage. It was the third costliest disaster in U.S. history. 

So one year after Hurricane Ian, what have we learned? How can we help our clients mitigate the increasing severe risk of storms, extreme participation in storm surges? We'll spend the next hour or so exploring the latest advances in hurricane modeling, forecasting and mitigation to help insurance professionals, businesses and our communities really better understand and prepare for these hurricane risks.

And when I tell you I've got the dream team to discuss this today and all these topics, I'm really not exaggerating. 

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A new slide, titled "Speakers," shows photos of each speaker. Joan Woodward, EVP, Public Policy; President, Travelers Institute, Travelers. Jamie Rhome, Deputy Director, National Hurricane Center. Dr. Jennifer Jurado, Chief Resilience Officer, Deputy Director, Resilient Environment Department, Broward County, FL. Dr. Brian Zachry, Senior Director, Catastrophe Risk Management, Travelers. 

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First, I'm thrilled that we are joined today by Jamie Rhome. He's the Deputy Director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami. Jamie has been with the National Hurricane Center since 1999. He started there as a marine forecaster, then in 2006 became a hurricane specialist and was selected to lead the NHC's Storm Surge Program in 2008. 

He's a subject matter expert on storm surge, coastal inundation for the National Weather Service's Hurricane Program. And oversaw the National Hurricane Center's Storm Surge Unit, which produces the official storm surge forecast and facilitates post-storm response and recovery efforts. His pioneering work in developing new storm surge forecasts and warning systems has earned him numerous awards, including the prestigious 2019 Service to America Medal. So thank you so much for being with us, Jamie.

Also joining us today is Dr. Jennifer Jurado. Dr. Jurado is the Chief Resilience Officer and the Deputy Director for Broward County, Florida's Resilient Environment Department. Dr. Jurado is responsible for leading climate resilience and environmental planning initiatives for Broward County, Florida. She works extensively with internal and regional stakeholders to advance countywide resilience planning, informed by future conditions and scenarios.

Her planning work includes resilient infrastructure design standards and redevelopment strategies. Thank you for being with us. And lastly, we're joined by my colleague Dr. Brian Zachry, Senior Director here at Travelers for CAT Risk Management and Enterprise Flood Lead. In this role, Dr. Zachry is responsible for evaluating CAT-related risk to develop pricing and underwriting strategies.

Dr. Zachry has over 15 years of hurricane storm surge modeling, forecasting and risk evaluation experience. He spent eight years at the National Hurricane Center, where he served most recently as Chief of the Technology and Sciences Branch. Dr. Zachry also led the development of NHC's National Storm Surge Hazard Maps. He holds a doctorate degree in wind science and engineering from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, and a Bachelor of Science degree in atmospheric science from Florida Institute of Technology.

So, as I said, we really do have a rock star panel for us today when it comes to hurricane and storm surge. As a reminder, my audience, go ahead and drop your questions in that Q&A feature at the bottom. We're going to get to them after we have some opening presentations. And I'm really pleased to turn over the virtual floor to National Hurricane Center Jamie Rhome. Jamie, please take it away.

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A new slide shows a satellite photo of a white cloudy swirling hurricane covering the state of Florida. Text, Hurricane Forecasting: Evolving to Risk-Based, Probabilistic Framework. Travelers Institute. Jamie Rhome and Josh Alland. 

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JAMIE RHOME: It's good to be with you all today. Usually this time of year, I'm in lockdown mode and don't really get to do much other than forecasting. So it's a little bit of a treat to have a glimpse into the outside world, get out of my echo chamber here at the Hurricane Center.

I’m going to use-- because it's after lunch, I'm going to use some humor to walk you through some relatively complicated topics as it pertains to the very quickly evolving nature of hurricane forecasting. The science has really, really catapulted ahead over the last few years. And because of that, there's often a lag in the public understanding of our products and services. So I'm going to walk you through all that.

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New slide. Text, Landing an airplane. An illustration shows an airplane hovering just above a runway as if landing. 

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But first, I want to start with a really simple exercise. The Washington Post did a survey recently where they asked average people-- average people, not pilots-- if they could land an aircraft. So let's imagine you're in a commercial aircraft, and for whatever reason, the pilots are unable to execute their duties. And there's a call over the intercom, “Can anybody land this aircraft?”

Now someone's going to be giving you instructions. So how many people-- and be honest with yourself-- think you can land that aircraft if there were someone providing you instructions? So just think for one second. Could you do it if you had to?

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Text, 1 in 3 Americans, including nearly half of men, are confident they can land an airplane. 

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Well, The Washington Post surveyed people. And one in three Americans, including half of men-- so the guys out there, we have a lesson to learn-- are confident they can land the aircraft. 

Now the question before us is, can we verify-- we're scientists, we want to verify-- can we verify this? 

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A photo shows the view of a runway from the cockpit. It is overlaid with various lines, including lines outlining the runway in perspective, with arcs in between the various angles, everything labeled with arrows and dotted lines and letters and Greek symbols. Text, quote, "There is a zero percent chance of somebody pulling that off." Patrick Smith (commercial air pilot).

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There's near zero chance of pulling that off according to commercial air pilot Patrick Smith. And why is that? And we just showed on here this visualization of some of the things the pilot has to do in their head within a very, very short amount of time under intense pressure with the dynamics of the world around them constantly changing. The wind speed and wind direction is changing, the lift of the aircraft is changing, the angle of approach is changing. There's traffic. 

They're just doing a myriad of calculations in their head here. And this graphic is meant to help understand why it's impossible for a non-trained individual to land an aircraft. Now what in the world does this have to do with hurricanes and then risk assessment and risk analysis?

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A map shows the Gulf of Mexico. A red hurricane symbol appears in the ocean between Cuba and Central America. Coming up from the symbol and reaching up past Florida are over a dozen ribbon-like lines, each in a different color, and each labeled with a series of letters. They mostly all follow a similar trajectory, some squiggling and curving as they reach land, one going off to the right back into the ocean off the coast of northern Florida.

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Does this look familiar to anybody here? So this is the most commonly used display system for hurricanes for people to talk about hurricanes, to understand hurricanes, to look at their risk, so-called spaghetti diagram. And I'm going to argue to you today that looking at this diagram, which has a myriad of scientific issues, is basically like trying to land an aircraft without proper training. 

Even if you could pick which one of those lines is most likely, and 99.9% of the population can't. Let me just go ahead and say it now. And I'm going to prove that to you. You still have to mentally unpack what that line means in terms of hazards. Storm surge, wind, rainfall. All of that is physically impossible to do without the proper tools and training. So, if this is your primary conduit for looking at hurricanes, I'm going to challenge you to change that today.

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New slide. Text, 20 Years of Progress. It shows five weather maps, two titled "wind," and two titled "storm surge." The first wind map is a heat-style map showing a blob over Florida with dark purple in the center, surrounded by bands of orange, yellow, and shades of green. The map below shows similar bands, but outlines in black, each labeled a different day and time. The storm surge maps show the coast of Florida with different colors along just the coastline, the first showing storm surge warning areas and storm surge watch areas, and the second map showing how many feet of storm surge. A fifth map shows the Atlantic Ocean between the US and Africa. Two hurricane symbols appear, one in the center of the ocean and one in the Caribbean. It has a red circled area with an X in it above South America, a smaller yellow area in the middle of the ocean, and an orange area with a line that points to the coast of West Africa. 

Text, Improvements. Track errors: 30 to 45 percent lower. Intensity errors: 20 to 40 percent lower. 3-day to 5-day forecasts. Increased lead time (12 hours) for hurricane watches/warnings. Probabilistic hazard information and forecast framework.

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Now I want to talk about the evolution of the nation's Hurricane Program over the last 20 years. I'll argue one of the greatest scientific achievements, at least within federal government, because you don't see this type of progress in federal service very often. Our track errors or how accurate our track forecasts are have dropped nearly 50%. Meaning 50% more accurate over the course of 20 years. Intensity errors, even though this has come largely-- and I would say in the last five or 10 years-- significant reduction in intensity errors, especially-- especially in rapid intensity, and we'll talk about that in a second. 

We've extended the lead times on our forecasts from three days to five days. We've increased the lead times on all of our watches and warnings by 12 hours. And we've implemented a probabilistic framework for hazard prediction, which arguably leads the National Weather Service. A lot of the other hazards in the National Weather Service are trying to follow the framework that we've established at the Hurricane Center.

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Another slide appears at the same time as the previous slide, making it difficult to see. It appears to show a line graph titled, NHC Official Track Error Trend, Atlantic Basin. 

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This graphic here just shows you the trends in our forecast accuracy. So lower on the y-axis is better. And you can see how all forecast times, the colors of different forecast times, have decreased over the last several years. And there are several track records-- track records denoted in green on the right-hand side, achieved in the 2022 seasons. Meaning in the 2022 season, we achieved record accuracy at the time slots shown in green. 

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New slide. Text, Progress in Forecasting Rapid Intensification. Two bar graphs appear, both titled NHC Official Forecast, A.L./EP combined when RI observed or Forecast. The left one is for 2015-17 and the right is 2020-22. They both show Forecast Error (kt) along the x axis from negative 80 to 40, and Number of Forecasts along the y-axis from 0 to 40 on the left graph and from 0 to 30 on the right. Each bar on the graphs is orange, the key showing that orange equals 24 hours. 

The left graph has some forecast error, just above 0, between negative 80 and negative 60, while the right graph has none. The peak on the left graph is about 37 forecasts at negative 35 forecast error. The peak on the right graph is about 27 forecasts at negative 10 forecast error.

Text, NHC's 24-hour intensity error during rapid intensification events has been cut in half since 2017: 10 kt compared to 20 kt. Largest under-forecast error reduced by 46% (40 kt compared to 75 kt).

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Similar with intensity, in this graph, if you notice the left versus the right, you see the distribution shifts to the right are closer to zero. That means we have all but eliminated the extreme low bias in intensity that we used to have. And that low bias was primarily due to rapid intensification events, or storms that go from a tropical storm to a major hurricane, often a Category 4 or 5 in the span of 24 to 36 hours. I mean, they just instantly shoot up. 

And we've seen a number of these in the last five to 10 years. So the sample size is pretty high. Our ability to not only predict rapid intensification, but to communicate it is just-- and I've been here for 24 years, and it's just mind-boggling how quick we've evolved on that front. 

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New slide. Text, Hurricane Ian: Rapid Intensification. NHC explicitly forecast Ian's rapid intensification. Two radar images are shown side by side, showing masses in red, yellow and blue. The first image shows a vague circular blob of the various colors. The right image shows the blobs forming a spiral. Text, NHC's average intensity forecast errors were 10 to 25% lower than the intensity consensus from 12 through 48 hours, and more than 30% lower than consensus at 72 hours. 

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And here’s a case-- here's a classic case. You can put this into real world perspective. 

Last year, Hurricane Ian was a classic rapid intensification example. If you look on the left-hand satellite image there, you can just see the early stages of a disturbance. And then ultimately, rapidly becoming a major hurricane over the span of a day or so.

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A line graph, titled NHC Best Track, shows a collection of blue lines that generally follow a parabola shape. The left side of the curve is circled. Text under the graph, 50 mph in 24 hours. 

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And then on the left-hand side there, those are all of the intensity forecasts that we issued during the entire life span of Ian. 

And what you see there is not only did we capture the rapid intensification, but we came out of the gates strong. Which, if you follow the Hurricane Center over the course of time, that's very atypical of us. We're usually quite conservative on the first few forecasts. But you can see we came out with the initial forecast strong. So if you think back to Ian, the messaging wasn't a major hurricane could go into the Gulf of Mexico. The messaging was, a major hurricane will move into the eastern Gulf of Mexico. And that's a substantial improvement in our ability to communicate.

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New slide, Text, Atlantic Intensity Error Trends. A line graph, titled NHC Official Intensity Error Trend, Atlantic Basin, shows the years 1990 to 2022 on the x-axis and Forecast error (kt) from 0 to 30 on the y-asix. Text, Errors dropped from 24 to 72 hours with strong downward long-term trends. Preliminary Intensity records broken in 2022. 

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Here's the classic intensity trends. You can see that we're getting better and better. Again, green represents record—record-breaking accuracy in the 2022 season. 

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New slide. Text, Historically (1963 to 2012) Vast Majority of Direct Deaths Have Been Water Related. A pie chart titled US Tropical Cyclone Direct Fatalities, 1963 to 2012. Text, From 1963 to 2012 (Rappaport Study): About 2,544 total direct fatalities. Water accounted for nearly 90% of direct deaths: Storm surge, 49%, rain, 27%, surf, 6%, offshore, 6%. Wind accounts for about 10%: combination of wind and tornado. 

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Now, this has manifested itself in a number of changes on the ground with respect to impacts to society, or more specifically in this case, mortality. So if we looked for the period of 1963 to 2012, we looked at direct-- not indirect, but direct fatalities, almost half of them were caused by storm surge. So half. Half of the direct fatalities were caused by storm surge. 

Another quarter of rainfall, or you add it all up, and over 75% of direct mortality was water. 

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A new slide shows a pie chart titled, Direct TC Fatalities, 2013-2022. Text, 57% (249) due to freshwater flooding. 15% (64) due to surf/rip currents, many from storms well away from the US. 12% (52) due to wind, many tree-related scattered across multiple storms. The pie chart also shows 11.4% storm surge, and slivers for tornado, lightning, marine, and unknown, 

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Fast forward more recently, the period of 2013 to 2022, the numbers look substantially different. Now over 50% of direct fatality is due to fresh water-- freshwater flooding. That's traditional rain and flooding, 15% surf/rip currents-- often, that's from distant storms-- 12% due to wind. 

And if something looks missing on this chart, storm surge is now the least-- at least for this period of time, the least deadly component of a tropical cyclone. So this is a shift. This is a shift. Society is evolving with these new risk-based derived products. And I want to help explain this a little bit more.

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New slide. Text, Models versus Official Forecasts. A graph, titled 96 hour Track Error vs. Consistency, 2020-22 Atlantic Basin, shows consistency (n mi) from 50 to 150 along the x axis and Track Error (n mi) from 75 to 175 along the y axis. The upper left corner of the graph is labeled, high error but consistent, the upper right, high error and inconsistent, the lower left, low error and consistent, the lower right, low error but inconsistent. A black dot labeled NH appears around 55 consistency and 115 track error. A red dot labeled E.M.X.I. appears at around 80 consistency and just over 125 track error. A blue dot labeled GFSI is at just under 100 consistency and slightly above the red dot in track error. A green dot labeled E.G.R.I. is around 110 consistency and above 150 track error. Text, NHC's track forecasts have lower average errors and are more consistent than individual models overall. 2022: record low track errors from 24 to 120 hours, Record low intensity errors from 12 to 60 hours. 

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So the No. 1 text message that I get during a hurricane-- and if you ever send me this text message, I'm going to ban you from my Rolodex-- is, did you see the GFS model? And I simply want to respond-- and I have to control myself-- yeah, I do this for a living. And why I want to respond that way is those models are just one of many inputs to the human forecaster. 

And the human forecaster beats every model out there. So if you look at the official human-generated forecast, which is the black dot on this chart, that's the official National Hurricane Center forecast. And then these other colored dots are just a sampling of the more accurate global models or lines on that spaghetti diagram that we opened the presentation with. You can see that the Hurricane Center not only beats them in traditional track error, but beats them in consistency. So we're both more consistent and more accurate than those individual lines on that spaghetti diagram.

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New slide titled Risk Communication. It shows a map of the East coasts of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. In the ocean by Florida is a yellow circle titled, Extent of Hurricane Force Winds. Three green lines coming from the circle and connect to three of the same-sized circle along the coast, one each covering the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. The coastline under the circles is outlined in red and labeled, Hurricane Warning Area. The dotted line that goes through the circle on Georgia is labeled, 36 hour Forecast Average Area. The solid center line that goes into the center circle is labeled, 36 hour Forecast Track. The top dotted line that goes through the last circle is labeled, 36 hour forecast average error. Another map shows the Southeastern US along with the Caribbean and part of Central America. Two small hurricane symbols appear below Cuba. Dozens of gray lines extend upward from the symbols, flaring out at the top to make a funnel shape, the widest part covering most of Florida. A dotted line goes through the center of the funnel. A solid line with hurricane symbols along it curves to the right, away from the dashed line before it hits Cuba. The key says gray lines are P-surge ensemble, the line with the hurricane symbols is BEST, and the dashed line is NHC Official. 

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And this is important, because that is the foundation by which we build every single risk derivative product. So our products are not based off models. Our products are based off of human-generated forecast. They use those models as part of the equation in their forecast. But everything we do, the watches and warnings, our probabilistic data sets, all of that is based off of human-generated forecasts. 

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A new slide titled Risk Communication shows two maps of Southern Florida. The key states that red is 9+ feet, orange is 6 to 9 feet, yellow is 3 to 6 feet, and blue is 0 to 3 feet. Text, height above NAVD88. The right map is titled, One deterministic track. It shows a dotted line that comes from below and to the left, and hits the coast of Florida near the top of the map. A blue area is shaded in in the ocean, along with a small outline on the coast at the southern tip. A smaller area along the coast is shaded in yellow, coming up onto the coast, outlining most of the coast. An area of orange occurs south of where the dotted line hits, and a small area of red occurs at the point of contact. The second graph is titled Ensemble of tracks. It shows a couple dozen lines fanning across the map that come from the same direction as the dotted line. It has areas of yellow, then orange, then red, starting in the ocean and crossing the coastline on the west coast. On the east coast of Florida is blue and yellow at the top. 

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And I'm sort of showing you how these products are created. You take that original forecast from a human, and then you build these alternative scenarios or solutions, which then enable one to create a probabilistic framework.

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New slide. Text, Hurricane Ian: Storm Surge. A Florida map has purple along the coast and the keys, from north of Ft. Myers down to the keys. A gray funnel shape starts at the bottom of the map and flares out at the top to cover Florida just above Ft. Myers. Text, Advisory 12, 54 hours before hazard. The key shows that pink is storm surge warning and purple is storm surge watch. 

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And now why is that important? So let's go back to Hurricane Ian. Now the narrative of Hurricane Ian-- think about it. Think about the narrative then and probably in most of your minds now is that storm surge was the big story in Ian. And the other one was that the storm made the sudden right turn, the sudden right hook. Caught everybody off guard. There was no lead time. 

So, I'm going to challenge you here. The cone is this light gray area shaded here. And the storm surge watches and warnings. Human-generated risk derivative. Or this pink area. And I'm going to walk you through the evolution of this storm from the perspective of these products.

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An animation shows the funnel shape narrowing as it moves to the right. It goes from Advisory 12 through to Advisory 22, 0 hours before hazard. The purple storm surge watch areas change to pink. The pink area extends north up to Tampa. Both the west and east coast areas of northern Florida become purple. As the funnel narrows and shifts away from the west coast, the east coast areas around Jacksonville turn to pink. 

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Now, if you view Ian through the lens of the watch warning and not the cone, there is no sudden right turn. There is no caught off guard. There is no-- the narrative is totally different. So

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New slide. Text, Don't rely solely on the cone. Augment the cone with hazard products: watches/warnings, time of arrival, wind speed probabilities, experimental peak surge, inundation mapping, excessive rainfall outlook. 

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My challenge for you today and my final slide is not to base the entirety of your analysis of a hurricane on those spaghetti lines, which is like landing an aircraft by yourself, or the cone.

I need people to switch to these newer probabilistic-based forecasting techniques, including our watches and warnings. We've got several here-- time of arrival, wind speed, probabilities. We've got all sorts of different type of products that cover the hazards. 

The cone does not cover the hazards. So I hope-- I'm going to end there. Stop sharing, and let that be my final say, is please switch to the newer probabilistic products.

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New slide presentation. Jennifer Jurado's video feed replaces Jamie's. A photo shows a cityscape with a river running through it with a bridge over it. Text, Flood Risk, Extreme Weather and Resilience in Broward County, Florida. September 20, 2023. Logo, Resilient Broward. 

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JENNIFER JURADO: Well, I am glad to follow on the heels of Jamie's presentation. And I certainly learned quite a bit from that. I will have far fewer technical slides and more pretty pictures. But they're not so pretty, because they actually speak to the impacts that occur when our communities in South Florida and beyond are impacted by some of these very severe storms, surge and rainfall events that Jamie spoke to. 

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New slide. Text, April 12, 2023 –Extreme Rainfall, 26 inches/6 hours. An aerial photo shows a large suburb with a grid of wide flooded streets with cars driving on them. A city skyline appears in the background. Text, Andrews Avenue, City of Fort Lauderdale Photos by Paul Krashefski / Broward County Natural Resources Division. A second photo shows a more close-up view of a suburban street lined with trees and houses. A truck pulling a trailer is on the street, along with a couple other cars, all covered about halfway in water. Text, Riverland South, Neighborhood. 

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And consistent with his expression that so much more is happening with regards to rainfall-induced flooding. That's really captured in many of the images here, where we've experienced extreme rainfall events, delivering several feet of rainfall within a period of hours or just a couple of days. Creating tremendous disruptions. 

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New slide. Text, Tropical Storm Eta, November 11, 2020. An aerial photo shows a suburb with flooded streets, with a few tanker trucks on them, their wheels partially covered with water. Text, Tropical Storm Eta, City of Fort Lauderdale Photo by Paul Krashefski / Broward County Natural Resources. A map of the Gulf of Mexico shows an orange S-shaped blob covering most of Florida and Cuba. Text, US National Hurricane Center tracking Tropical Storm Eta. The map has a red spot off the western coast of Florida. A smaller horizontal blob is below in the ocean, touching parts Nicaragua and Honduras. It has a small red slash inside it. The key shows that the orange means Tropical Storm and the red is Hurricane. Text, Force wind swaths of Eta from advisories 1 through 52. 

(SPEECH)
And my role as a Chief Resilience Officer for Broward County is a bit distinct than working on the height of the real-time forecasts. And if I were in that arena, I'd probably be working more in our Emergency Management Division or in our Operations Center. 

But instead, my work is more focused on thinking about the longer-term implications of climate change and extreme and severe impacts relating to storms and heat and other considerations on our community. How it affects our urban areas, how it affects our natural areas. How those factors interact.

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New slide. Text, Hurricane Irma, September 18, 2018. A photo shows a marina dry slip storage structure with a torn roof and leaning poles with boats sliding off them. Text, Marina Mile Road. Another photo shows a boardwalk next to a beach lined with palm trees on one side and buildings on the other. A front end loader shovels piles of sand covering the street. Text, Fort Lauderdale Beach. The third photo shows a strip of road with damaged buildings and debris. Text, Florida Keys. Photo 101199868, Hurricane by Felix Mizioznikov, Dreamstime.com. Royalty-Free Stock Photo – purchased on subscription by Andy Royston / Broward County Resilience Unit. 

(SPEECH)
And as a Chief Resilience Officer, my role is to focus on both how to adapt and mitigate for the severity of those impacts through different types of policy planning, programs, projects and so forth, that we would work on within our county. As well as-- while I won't talk about here, working on the energy side of things and how we can lessen our energy footprint that is part of the driver for the escalation and the severity of the impacts over decades. 

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New slide. Text, Hurricane Ian, October 1, 2023. A beachfront home is destroyed with debris littering the beach. Text, Hurricane Ian destroyed house in Florida residential area. Natural disaster and its consequences. Another photo shows an aerial view of a roof with the shingles ripped off exposing the wood underneath, with some wood panels also missing. Text, Hurricane-damaged house in Florida residential area. Natural disaster and its consequences. A photo shows a neighborhood street lined with houses, with a boat lying across the middle of it. Text, Destroyed houses and neighborhoods after Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida, Sea Front, USA. 

(SPEECH)
One thing that I would express is that my role is at various scales. So, Broward County is a county with a very highly urbanized environment. We have 24 miles of shoreline. We contain 31 cities. And we know that implications of rising seas and surge and rainfall are a countywide consideration. And it's not just something that's constrained to the coast, this exposure. 

So we are working on a countywide basis with our 31 cities, developing advanced models to help inform our understanding of the severity of, in particular, flood impacts associated with various extreme conditions. I work across our agencies in terms of, how do we need to prepare all of our infrastructure and orient our services in a manner that is more anticipating of the severity of disruptions that may occur? And then working, of course, to ensure that we're upgrading our own infrastructure to lessen the potential for impacts, and then that we work to hasten recovery following a major event.

And so, in our county, we operate major water/wastewater utility. We coordinate with other water/wastewater utilities. We have a major airport, an international airport, seaport. There's major infrastructure that we manage in conjunction with the Department of Transportation. We're working on housing initiatives. We have Human Services, which might include responses for, how do you care for the population following a major event? And what types of facilities do we need to have in place that may not look like our traditional response, where we think about the scale and the nature of these disruptions?

Again, they're not necessarily happening at a time where we have had a hurricane warning or a storm activation. But there could be other conditions and flash floods that we need to respond to in a way that we haven't historically. And then finally, I would note my work is also in conjunction with our neighboring counties. We collaborate across the entire Southeast Florida region, which includes Palm Beach, our county, Broward, Miami Dade and Monroe in the Florida Keys.

And we coordinate across all levels on both climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, recognizing that all of our infrastructure is connected. Our watershed, our beaches, our coral reefs, our transportation systems, our economy. Development practices extend across the region. So there's a lot of regional scale coordination that happens so that we're not working at cross purposes. We're leveraging the work across the region.

And then we're partnering. We're partnering with academic institutions, the private sector, housing authorities, federal and state agencies. And working to develop and advance, again, the science, the tools, the planning, the projects. Everything that we need to ready and prepare our community for a strong, resilient future.

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New slide. Text, Questions? Dr. Jennifer Jurado, Chief Resilience Officer, Deputy Director, Resilient Environment Department. jjurado@broward.org. 954-519-1464. Logo, Broward County Florida, Resilient Environment. 

(SPEECH)
And with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Brian Zachry. Thank you. 

BRIAN ZACHRY: Thank you, Jennifer. I think that was a great segue from Jamie into the resiliency in Broward County. Now I'm going to start off with a brief recap of the season and where we are today.

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New slide. Text, 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season Recap. The 2023 hurricane season has been "average" to date. However, based on historical data, we usually have another six named storms after the climatological peak, which would result in an above-average season. 

A graph, titled Atlantic Hurricane and Tropical Storm Activity based on data from 1944 to 2020, shows storms per day per 100 years from May 1 to December 1. The hurricane line, in yellow, starts around 0 in mid-May, peaks at around 60 in mid-September, and ends close to 0 after December 1. The red line, which shows hurricanes and tropical storms, begins at just above 0 on May 1, peaks at almost 120 by mid-September, then is around 5 just after December 1. A table shows information for the 2023 season, as of 9/14/23. Named Storms: 14 to-date, 14 to 21 NOAA Outlook, 14 NOAA seasonal average. Hurricanes: 6 to-date, 6 to 11 NOAA Outlook, 7 NOAA season average. Major Hurricanes: 3 to-date, 2 to 5 NOAA Outlook, 3 NOAA seasonal average.

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We're now just 10 days past the peak of the season in the Atlantic basin. And 2023 is shaping up to be an above-average season. This is in line with NOAA's predictions, as shown in the table on the slide. 

Hurricane Nigel is out churning in the Atlantic right now. That's the 14th named storm of the season. It is no threat to the U.S. But this is a storm that's putting us on average to date for the number of named storms. And as you mentioned, Joan, there's been one hurricane landfall by Idalia in the big region of Florida. And then also Tropical Storm Harold made landfall near South Padre Island in Texas.

I think even though we're on the downswing of activity, we need to keep in mind, there's still over one-third of the season to go. And on average, we can expect six more named storms after the peak of the season. So we'll have to wait and see how the rest of the season unfolds. But it is planned to be an above-average season.

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New slide. Text, Storm Surge Risk: Fact or Fiction? A map of the Southern US from the east coast of Texas to Florida titled NHC Storm Surge Risk Map: Category 3. The coast along the Gulf of Mexico is lined in red, which is lined with a thinner area of orange and yellow along the inside, including spots of blue just further into the coast. The key shows that red is greater than 9 feet above ground, orange is greater than 6 feet, yellow is greater than 3 feet, and blue is less than 3 feet. 

Text, Fact: Storm surge and large waves are often the greatest threat to life, property, and infrastructure from a hurricane. Over 20 million people are at risk of storm surge flooding from Texas to Maine. Fiction: Only coastal communities are at risk from storm surge flooding. You don't have to worry about flooding from tropical storms or Category 1 hurricanes.

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As Jamie mentioned, storm surge was historically the most deadly, really, weather phenomenon associated with hurricanes. Going back in time to help raise awareness for storm surge risk in the U.S., the National Hurricane Center first released Storm Surge Hazard Maps or risk maps back in 2014, which aligns really nicely with what Jamie showed on his slides. And on the right-hand side of this figure, on the right-hand side of the slide is an example of a Category 3 worst case scenario storm surge. 

This shows how far storm surge can go inland and how high the water can get in these scenarios. The red color that you can see on the map is inundation greater than nine feet above ground. The most important takeaway is that from these risk maps is it makes it clear that storm surge is not just a beachfront problem. Surge can go well inland along many parts of the coast, as you can see in the map. And in total, over 20 million people are at risk from storm surge flooding from Texas to Maine.

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New slide. Text, US Catastrophes: Economic losses by decade. A bar chart titled Economic loss estimates shows economic loss in billions of dollars from each decade from the 1990s to the 2020s, from severe thunderstorm, winter storm/freeze, wildfire, flood and tropical cyclone. 1990s is $288 billion, the most from tropical cyclone, then flood, then winter storm, then thunderstorm, then wildfire. In the 2000s, the loss was $523 billion, the vast majority tropical cyclone, and less than the 1990s for all the other categories, except about double for thunderstorms. In the 2010s, the loss was $845 billion, the vast majority being tropical cyclones, followed by thunderstorms-- thunderstorms, wildfire and floods being over double the amount in the 2000s. In the 2020s so far, the loss has been $402 billion, the majority being tropical cyclones, the other categories being smaller than in the 2010s, except for winter storms, which is almost doubled.

Text, 13 of the top 15 loss events recorded are Hurricanes. A chart shows the top 15 loss events in billions of dollars. 1, Hurricane Katrina, 2005, 190 billion. 2, Harvey, 2017, 151. 3, Ian, 2022, 113. 4, Maria, 2017, 109. 5, Sandy, 2012, 84. 6, Ida, 2021, 80. 7, Irma, 2017, 61. 8, Andrew, 1992, 57. 9, Midwest Flooding, 1993, 43. 10, Hurricane Ike, 2008, 41. 11, Ivan, 2004, 32. 12, Michael, 2018, 29. 13, Florence, 2018, 28. 14, California Wildfires, 2018, 28. 15, Hurricane Wilma, 2005, 28.

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So how does this translate and connect to economic losses? Well, hurricanes are traditionally the costliest weather events that we have. They bring strong winds, storm surge and destructive waves, like Jamie mentioned, and also river and flash flooding, tornadoes that often impact millions of people in their path. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information began tracking these billion-dollar weather events back in 1980. And since then, 13 of the top 15 loss events are hurricanes.

Looking at the graph, you can see the tropical cyclones in the green color. They've dominated the percentage of loss compared to other weather events. And also you can see an increase in trend in losses over time. And the 2020s are definitely on pace to exceed the 2010s.

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New slide. Text, Narrowing the Path of Destruction through Mitigation. Travelers is a founding research member of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS). FORTIFIED is a "code plus" standard to create more resilient homes and businesses. Post-event damage surveys clearly show homes built to modern codes outperform those built to older codes. Florida is the first state to adopt a FORTIFIED-like standard. 

Two side by side maps of Florida are titled, FBC Requirements vs. FORTIFIED. The left map is titled, Nearly equivalent to FORTIFIED roof. The map of Florida is completely colored in green. The second map is titled, Nearly Equivalent to FORTIFIED Gold. Southern Florida up to most of Central Florida is colored in gold. The coast of the western part of the panhandle is also gold. The key below shows both green and gold mean FORTIFIED.

Below is a table. Designation region WBDR: New construction, 45,000, in gold. Re-roof, 155,000, in green. Total, 200,000. Designation region, All of Florida. New construction, in green, 70,000. Re-roof, 165,000, in green. Total, 235,000. Total new construction, 115,000. Total re-roof 320,000. Total total, 435,000.

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So, what can we do about hurricane risk? Jamie alluded to with the fatalities, we should evacuate before an event happens to protect our lives and our loved ones. But we can't take our homes and businesses with us. So we must mitigate them to minimize the damage caused by hurricanes and other severe weather events. 

So Travelers has worked closely with the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety for over 20 years and is a founding research member. So what they've done is developed a standard called FORTIFIED to create more resilient homes and businesses and structures. And the state of Florida was the first to adopt a FORTIFIED-like roof standard and the FORTIFIED gold standard in the wind-borne debris regions.

So, looking down at the table on the right, since 2021, 435,000 homes have been FORTIFIED-like standards, by either reroof or the new build. While this only represents a relatively small percentage of homes in Florida, now it will help bend the loss curve down. There's no doubt about that. And hopefully it'll serve as a guide for other states, especially coastal states, to follow this lead.

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New slide. Text, Travelers Prepare and Prevent Resources. A photo shows shuttered windows and is captioned, How to Help Prepare for a Hurricane (Video). Another photo shows a smiling woman in a store window putting up a sign that says, Now Open. Text, Hurricane Preparedness for Businesses. A screenshot shows a document titled, text, Travelers, Tips for Keeping You and Your Family Safe. Three Steps for Disaster Preparedness. 1, Create a Survival Kit, with a long checklist of items. Another heading reads, 3, Build an inventory. Text, https://www.travelers.com/resources/weather/hurricanes. 

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Think with that, I wanted to end with sharing Travelers’ Prepare and Prevent resources. So, there's a wealth of information on the website for both personal and business needs that you can see on the slide. Ranging from how to prepare for a hurricane, how to be safe with using a generator, to how to keep our family safe as well. So please check out these resources from Travelers so you're better prepared and more knowledgeable before an event occurs. 

And lastly, I'll also mention that federal government has a wealth of information on their various organization websites as well, like the National Hurricane Center, FEMA, or you can visit ready.gov. With that, I'll turn it back over to Joan.

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The slide presentation disappears and is replaced by a split screen showing all four speakers. 

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JOAN WOODWARD: OK, terrific. Well, thank all three of you for just terrific opening presentations. I want to dig a lot deeper into many of the topics you touched on. But first I want to talk to you, Jamie, maybe about-- we had Hurricane Ian. Third largest disaster in the United States. What were the contributing factors in your mind that made this storm so devastating? 

JAMIE RHOME: Exposure. So, often people will look at these damage statistics in terms of the total amount of loss and mortality and other metrics. And then they try to ascribe something specific to that storm. And whether you call-- there's many terms for this. But when you dig into the science, the numbers, the facts, this storm cut across the heart of the Florida Peninsula and hit multiple densely populated communities.

So in addition to the Naples/Fort Myers/Southwest Florida area with the storm surge and wind, the incredibly heavy rainfall ran up over the I-4 corridor. If you're not familiar with Florida, that's a very densely populated community. And this is what contributed to the extensive damage-- sheer magnitude of people and properties exposed.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. Thank you for that. So Jennifer, understanding that every storm is different, every location is different, what were the key takeaways for you in resiliency planning and strategies from Hurricane Ian?

JENNIFER JURADO: Well, obviously the impacts were really difficult to observe. We have-- we do pay attention to the issue of storm surge and storm surge orientation. And every storm reveals different vulnerabilities and exposures based upon the local landscape. And it’s never-- if the storm is head-on versus running parallel, we need to take into account that orientation can create exposures that might defy what someone was anticipating, one. So again, the perspective that you need to plan for different orientations, and it's not just going to be necessarily an acute delivery.

Second, I think the reinforcing that storm surge and that movement generates implications that extend well beyond the immediate coast and recognizing the importance of addressing more inland exposures. We saw that older infrastructure didn't fare as well as infrastructure that had been developed more recently, might have applied higher standards. And so it really-- every storm reinforces the importance of building well from the beginning and not taking shortcuts.

And then we also had a community a little bit further inland that's called Babcock Ranches. And it was really heralded as this example of what resilient development can do to safeguard a community. And while that community might not have received the brunt of the impacts, nonetheless, the fact that they fared so well was really an example of how resilient investments can serve to help insulate communities from impacts and then create a safe landing pad for others that may be needing a little bit of relief.

And they had backup energy systems. So despite what was happening with the energy grid, they never lost power. They were utilizing solar and had good backup. They had water management systems that are managed-- the water levels and lakes by sensors. So they have real-time operational controls to deal with storage and volumes of water and be able to distribute controls and gates to manage that.

And it was also built at a higher elevation. And it was really solid, good construction. So it provides a very real example of what resilient design for communities, not just individual structures, can also do to avoid losses and impacts during these types of extreme events.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, thank you so much for that. Brian, I want to go to you. What are the insurance industry's key takeaways, then, from Hurricane Ian? What did we learn, and what is the outlook, then, for the insurance industry when we're seeing so many more hurricanes, so many more intense hurricanes?

BRIAN ZACHRY: I touched on this a little bit during my presentation. But what stood out during Hurricane Ian was the building code performance. As a bit of background, Florida introduced building codes back in 2002. They update them every three years. There's about as best building codes as we have around the world. And this was pretty obvious during this event. We used our internal tools and techniques.

And our findings were that homes that were built to the Florida modern building codes performed significantly better than the others. IBHS also conducted damage surveys along with other groups, and all came to the same terms. So you can expand that from Florida to the other coastal states as well to where states that have better building codes, more modern building codes, are going to perform better than those that don't have them.

JOAN WOODWARD: Right, OK. Thank you. So now I want to switch to storm surge. And Jamie, obviously the subject matter expert here for us. Can you give us a rundown of exactly what is storm surge, why is it increasingly a threat to our communities?

JAMIE RHOME: Yes. So storm surge in its simplest form is just the strong winds of a storm. Typically a hurricane is where we see it manifest, because those are the strongest winds in a large-scale storm. Strong winds of a storm pushing the ocean to the land. Pushes the ocean to the land. The water's got nowhere to go. It goes up and on to land. Or up rivers and tributaries. And then it floods places that are inhabited by people.

I think your question was, why is it getting worse? There's a number of reasons. Two big ones. First, the societal reason. We're building more into the coastal plain than ever before. We're just building more and more and more. And the stuff that is there is more expensive. So if you look at the skyline of Fort Lauderdale in Miami Dade where I'm at right now, small homes have been replaced by condominiums and skyscrapers. So you're increasing the cost per parcel. That's one of the bigger problems-- problems or contributors.

The other is the impacts from storms are getting worse. So the number of storms are not changing because of climate change. But the impacts that they are bringing to society are getting worse. And that's pretty much an undisputed fact of science right now. Sea level rise is making storm surge worse. A warmer climate is making the rainfall and heavy precipitation worse. I mean, Jennifer just lived that reality a few weeks-- a few months ago.

And the warmer climate is making rapid intensification more likely, which is reducing society's opportunity or chance to react or respond to a system as it's approaching. They're intensifying so quickly on our doorstep, it's making it harder and harder for society to respond.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, thank you for that. And Brian, you led the development at the National Hurricane Center Storm Surge Hazard Maps back in 2014. So, what have changed in the last 10 years? What is going on with the maps now?

BRIAN ZACHRY: I was lucky enough to work right beside Jamie to release those maps back in 2014. And if you look at it visually, they haven't changed that much since 2014. But the technology and the data that goes into creating those maps have changed substantially. For the initial release, there was only storm surge data from Texas to Maine. Now, NHC have released many other regions within their area of responsibility. Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Southern California. Jamie can probably name some more.

But a lot more regions have gone in. And from a-- just a pure storm surge modeling perspective, computational resources have increased tremendously since 2014, allowing for much higher resolution modeling. Many different hurricane scenarios built into those grids. And then also coupling to an ocean wave model. Really all that come together to make a more accurate representation of the storm surge risk. And there's many other things, but those are the big key changes from 2014.

JOAN WOODWARD: All right, thanks for that. And Jamie, to you then. Storm surge is the primary reason obviously people are evacuating during hurricanes. How are these zones created, and what role does NHC play in facilitating evacuations for folks?

JAMIE RHOME: Oh, a question near and dear to my heart. Thank you. So a lot of people don't know this. We evacuate in this country because of storm surge. Except for poorly engineered homes. We don't evacuate in this country for wind. We evacuate for water, because it's the leading cause of death, at least historically.

So the way we do this is the Hurricane Center, using similar technology that Brian just unpacked for you in his response, creates these risk products, exposure risk products. And then that is turned over to state and local officials who draw these preset evacuation zones. They're preset. And they're often lettered or numbered depending on what part of the country. Here in Florida, we letter them-- A, B, C, D, and hopefully never have to use an E, but they exist.

And then during a storm, using the official forecast from the National Hurricane Center, emergency managers will decide based off the forecast risk products like storm surge, which one of those letters needs to be evacuated. And then they will call a voluntary or mandatory evacuation of a given set of letters or numbers. Again, here in Florida, we're letters. So you might see, for example, I think in Ian, it was zones A and B, whereas-- in Lee County. Whereas in Idalia, the Tampa-St. Pete area was on A, right?

So these letters are what help you gauge whether or not you've been asked or your clients have been asked to evacuate. And they tell you what to do. And if you haven't been asked to evacuate, history shows that you are actually endangering yourself and your family if you do evacuate. Unless you have special circumstances like you're dependent on power for medical reasons, your respirator, that sort of stuff. Now in those cases, you might have to evacuate for power-related reasons.

But if you're not one of those individuals, self-evacuation beyond what has been asked by local officials, often does more harm than good.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, thank you for that. Jennifer, back to you. So can you give us some concrete examples maybe of how Broward County is working to become more resilient against the storm surge that we're seeing?

JENNIFER JURADO: Sure. Well, I begin with there's a lot of modeling that demonstrates how much you can reduce impacts through just natural infrastructure. We have a pretty extensive beach nourishment program. Clearly we undertake a lot of activities to protect our coral reefs, which are the first line of defense against storm surge. And so keeping those features in place is really critical.

Dunes are an important feature. Beach dunes. And in the past, communities might object to having prominent beach dunes, because maybe it's disrupting line of sight. And when they're dining outside the cafe, they can't see the water. But we've just really expressed we can't afford the exposure. Building beaches and not having dunes in place that protect our infrastructure, keep sand on the beach, and help reduce those impacts, which are far more extensive than the cost of the projects themselves, has to be part of our practice.

So we've adopted land use policy that requires 80% of our beaches to have beach dunes integrated into that landscape. And it's part of every one of our projects. We have major grant programs to help encourage that. Beyond that, we did work with the Army Corps of Engineers and RMS, Risk Management Solutions, to evaluate some of the exposures and losses with different storm surge scenarios with sea level rise. That helped inform a standard where there used to be no standard in place except a top elevation that it limited the height of seawalls which many municipalities had in place.

We as a county adopted through our land use plan a new minimum requirement. And the new minimum requirement is a substantial increase. In some areas, it's more than four feet, depending on the existing age of the infrastructure. And there's nuances to the policy. But nonetheless, we were able to evaluate the reduction in damages if we were to keep policies as they were. Established four, five, six feet in height.

And we went with what's called five feet NAVD. It's a datum and elevation. That's now applied countywide. All of our coastal cities have adopted that standard. And it's required. Additionally, we take into account the combination of sea level rise and storm surge in our future conditions modeling and mapping. We have a major project underway that I think I'll be able to talk about.

But we're really looking at the compound effects of sea level rise and storm surge, which is not evaluated by FEMA. It's not a requirement for building standards. But it's something that we're bringing into our practice as it relates to how we evaluate land use and infrastructure requirements across our entire community. And really looking at the implications of that propagation of storm surge well inland. And how do we build infrastructure with that in mind?

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, terrific. Thank you for that. So Jamie, you've been at the Hurricane Center for the past almost 25 years. How has forecasting changed maybe even in the last decade? When you talk about the spaghetti strings and all the different models. But how has it changed for you since you've been there?

JAMIE RHOME: Just the ability to see, detect and forecast changes in hurricanes is just remarkable. I was acting director last year during Ian after 24 years of service here. And I was still stunned by the forecast as I was watching it being made. Because I can remember a time where the Hurricane Center wouldn't have been able to come anywhere close to making that forecast.

And as horrific as Ian was in terms of its impact, I mean, for those of us who have studied this for a long time, that scenario, that exact scenario in the Lee County, was our worst-case scenario. And we anticipated mortality in the hundreds-- hundreds. And we ended up with, I think, 41 direct fatalities in Lee County. And we're going to work to bring that down to zero.

But from what we feared would happen and what we've historically been able to do, there are untold lives saved in that case. And unfortunately, that story didn't get told by the media. It's now common to pedal failure in media. And again, we're going to work to bring that 41 to 0. But it's still a massive, massive improvement in what we have historically been able to do.

JOAN WOODWARD: Talking about this now and just your urgent ask of people to evacuate saved, again, as you say, hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. So thank you. I'm going to go to Brian here. Your job is to take all these models and forecasts and evaluate catastrophe risk around the whole country, of course. Give us some insights from an insurance perspective into some of the trends that you're seeing here at Travelers.

BRIAN ZACHRY: Sure. Jamie touched on the hurricane trends a bit there. But I think we also need to be mindful of the non-weather trends that we're seeing that also have a significant impact on the catastrophe risk. Of course, inflation is pretty obvious. But there's also post-event demand surge. That continues to increase the cost of recovery and rebuilding following hurricanes.

Jamie also hit on this point. But we're seeing increase in coastal population growth. And that's really outpacing other U.S. growth rates. So those two non-weather trends are really impacting the insurance industry.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. I want to get into some of the audience Q&A. And thank you all for putting it in the Q&A there. We have a couple of questions. One from Paul Martin. How is artificial intelligence impacting hurricane modeling? And do you expect this to even become more accurate? I guess that's for you, Jamie. Or Brian.

JAMIE RHOME: Yeah, it's going to come as a surprise to people hearing my response. But we've been using artificial intelligence for quite some time in our approach and modeling. Now, it's gotten better and better and more sophisticated, able to do greater and greater things. Our AI techniques is one of the reasons we're able to beat the individual models. I showed that plot where we beat the individual models.

Everybody's online looking at models and looking at things and sending plots to each other of models. We beat every single one of them because our forecasters have artificial intelligence that is giving them guidance on how to dissect those models and giving them guidance on which models are performing best. And that's something that a human can't do, because it changes every storm and changes every advisory or every forecast. People will say-- I hear people say-- and there's people probably listening that do this. Oh, I follow the European, because that's the one that's always accurate.

It might be most accurate for a given storm or a given situation, but that doesn't imply it's going to be most accurate for the next one. So what our AI techniques, artificial intelligence techniques are doing, is it's bias correcting these models for us and giving specific guidance to our forecasters. Human beings that are then correcting on the fly. And that's why we're able to beat every single model out there. Great question.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. Another one coming in. I think this is probably for you, Jennifer. From Kurt Thorensen of A.J. Gallagher. What is your perspective of responsible building and development in areas that are traditionally at high risk for wind and flooding? So let's talk about counties actually prohibiting the rebuilding in some places. How do you feel about that?

JENNIFER JURADO: Yeah. Well, I'm just going to acknowledge I'm less equipped to talk about wind than I am flood. I don't really deal with the issues of hurricanes. But I am involved with land use decisions. So we have special maps that delineate areas at increased risk of sea level rise with just about-- just over three feet of additional sea level rise. So we're planning for 2070 and a 50-year planning horizon.

If we have projects that are proposed for such locations, they are subject to a different level of review. And we take into account the change in groundwater table that's predicted. We take into account tidal flooding. We take into account future conditions, flood elevations with combined flooding, not just single factor flooding. So it's rainfall with high tides plus groundwater table rise, etc.

If the applicant can meet design conditions, and we have not just the site, but full community infrastructure that can support projects, I think there are opportunities for resilient design in certain cases. In other cases, we've had applicants withdraw their applications because they knew a negative response was going to be provided, and we just can't support the wrong project in these locations.

So we are tightening our reviews around those issues. I think that the next series of maps that we have will help inform more. Under a disaster-like recovery circumstance, where do we want to redirect and modify development practices given those risks? And we're working on those tools to help better support that conversation, recognizing that the footprint of our communities will not look the same in 50 and 70 years. And we'll be making adjustments.

But flood risk doesn't preclude development, of course, because we live in Florida. And it's pretty extensive exposure that we know exists anyway. But there are heightened areas, and we need to be cautious. And we've reduced incentives for multifamily housing and so forth in areas that would be not only more costly today with the flood risk, but in the future, as you all know, with the insurance rates and so forth, it wouldn't be prudent also to put vulnerable populations in areas where insurance is likely to be a challenge in the future as well. So it's all part of our thoughtfulness around those decisions.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, terrific. Thank you for that. Next question is from Ian Lindsey. Ian asked-- I think this is probably for Jamie. I just wanted to know if and how you monitor the possible cold fronts heading south and how you factor them into your forecast. And that they can suddenly change their trajectory of a storm and hurricane from one moment to the next. So Jamie, from Ian Lindsey.

JAMIE RHOME: Yeah, so, I mean, we've got what we call numerical models that predict or span the entire globe. And so they're showcasing weather events moving around the entire globe, including cold fronts and jet streams and all of these. Every weather feature out there, these models have it.

And as they pertain or change the course of a hurricane, we're looking at that and assessing that. So we have traditional hurricane-only models that are just looking at the hurricane dynamics. And then we have global models that are focusing on more the global, the weather pattern. And our forecasters are pulling in all that information and then placing their own judgment on it, too.

I mean, there's several cases where the forecasters are able to look at something and apply a pattern recognition or experience and say, well, we just know from experience that this is what's going to happen. And the numerical models, I like to say they have no conscience. Because they don't know what they're doing, right? They're just equations. Whereas a human very much knows what they're doing and can apply those corrections to it.

So yeah, great question. And this is the time of year, too. This is the time of year that we start looking at cold fronts digging deeper into the tropics and have a greater and greater impact on future hurricanes.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, wonderful. Thanks. Next question up from Chelsea Burns of Verisk. Do carriers have the infrastructure in place to effectively and targetedly send out alerts to customers? So Brian, I guess that one's for you.

BRIAN ZACHRY: Right. Obviously can't speak to other carriers. But Travelers does have the ability to send out email communication. Also uses social media to inform both our customers and our agents before, during and even after events.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, wonderful. Lots of questions about insurance in Florida. Jennifer, do you have a comment on basically, are there other things that Florida can do? Obviously, we know there's been some changes in the law to make the affordability and availability, which is what everyone wants to know. Is there other changes that you see on the horizon coming?

JENNIFER JURADO: I know that there are things that we would like to see. I think that the South Florida high wind velocity section of building code would probably be worth count-- statewide application. I know that there's a lot of disputes in terms of what are construction costs and so forth. But looking at the performance of these systems and the reference was made to FORTIFIED, I just, I think, appreciating that everything that we do to harden our environment is going to be one that reduces annual costs of living in Florida and the costs that come with these large events.

I think that ultimately, there's a lot that needs to happen with regards to the preservation of local governments also to have heightened standards and making sure that there's nothing that precludes abilities to implement the types of protections that we know maybe need to be enhanced relative to statewide averages. And making sure that we're accounting for local conditions where we need to be more proactive and keeping-- and we need to communicate better all of those things so that those investments can be better reflected in the insurance rates and the evaluations of exposures. And that provides additional incentive for local governments and the state to do more.

JOAN WOODWARD: Yeah, OK. Terrific. Question coming in from David Marzi. Hurricane Lee was watched along the entire Eastern Coast as it worked its way northward. What's the likelihood of a storm system like Lee may find its way inching closer to New England, New York area as a result of the warm Atlantic waters? Other pressure systems moving from west to east across the U.S. or other factors. So that's for you, Jamie.

In terms of Superstorm Sandy, what we saw-- this person really wants to know, New York, New England. Anything in your view that would cause more activity in those areas.

JAMIE RHOME: Yeah, so hurricanes derive their energy from warm oceans. And if the ocean is warming, or more importantly, if the warmer waters are sneaking their way northward along the Eastern Seaboard, then it stands to reason that those systems are going to hang on to some of their energy or intensity farther north. So that's unfortunately bad news that-- it doesn't mean there's going to be a system tomorrow or next week. It just means on the whole, on the cumulative, storms are either going to reach further north or carry more momentum and impacts farther north.

And I think Lee was a great warning shot to the Northeast. Fortunately, impacts were relatively mild, minimal. But I think it probably served as a wake up shot to people who think that they can't make it that far North. I'm here to tell you that they can.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. Well, listen, unfortunately our time is up for today. Our enormous thanks to Jamie, Jennifer and Brian for your time and expertise. Watch out for the replay coming soon to your email boxes. So thank you all to my wonderful panelists. And thank you for what you're doing for the country and for everyone on the coastlines.

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New slide. A US map is titled, Cyber: Prepare, Prevent, Mitigate, Restore (registered trademark). Logos, Travelers Institute (registered trademark), Travelers. A Travelers red umbrella logo appears at each city on the education tour. Text, National Cybersecurity Education Tour. Sept. 12 – Atlanta, GA, Sept. 19 – San Ramon, CA, Oct. 17 – Worcester, MA, Oct. 20 – Kansas City, MO, Nov. 7 – Bellevue, WA, Nov. 29 – Dallas, TX. Register: travelersinstitute.org. 

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I hope you're going to join us all for some other exciting programs we have coming up. First, we have a bunch of live events. Our Cybersecurity Education series is on the road. This month, we just got back from Atlanta and San Francisco. In the next couple months, we'll be hosting events in Massachusetts, Missouri, Washington state, Texas. If you're in any of these areas on our screen here, please join us in the chat. We put the links to register. 

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New slide. Text, Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) Webinar Series. Upcoming Webinars: Oct. 11 – Cyber Readiness: 5 Critical Steps for Your Organization, Oct. 25 – 100th Webinar Episode! Stay Tuned for Special Guest Announcement, Nov. 8 – An Insurance Agent’s Field Guide to Gen Z, Nov. 15 – Retirement Playbook: Your Guide to Life After Insurance. Register: travelersinstitute.org. 

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And then of course, our webinar series will continue. As part of our Cybersecurity Awareness Month, on October 11, we're going to dig into the five best practices organizations can employ to become more cybersecure. And then you have to stay tuned for this one. October 25, we're going to host our 100th anniversary celebration of our series with a very, very special guest. We're going to announce this soon. You're not going to want to miss it. 

And November 8th, we're going to talk about Gen Z again. We've had this program before with Jacqui Heidelberger. She's an amazing research scientist here at Travelers, digging into generations in the workplace. Specifically Gen Z. She has some new research specific to the insurance industry about Gen Z. So we're going to go from Gen Z one week to boomers the next week. On November 15, we're going to be joined by my friends Jody and Mark Rollins. Some of you may know the Rollins family, decades in the insurance industry. 

Well now they've retired, and they have created the mastering of art of living and retiring this fabulous life after insurance. So-- we're all going to have. So they're going to come on and tell their story and how you can find meaning and purpose in retirement. So even if you're close to retirement and you're not even close, this one is for you, because we all at some point will face that moment.

So register for all these programs on our website. 

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New slide. Text, Watch replays: travelersinstitute.org. LinkedIn, Connect: Joan Kois Woodward. Take our survey: Link in chat. #WednesdayswithWoodward. 

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Connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to stay connected with you. I post almost every day, for those of you who follow me. Probably too much. If you haven't already, take our survey about this event. We want to hear your feedback. We want to know what topics and speakers you guys are looking for. So please feel free to ping me on that. And of course, have a wonderful afternoon and week. And we'll see you in a couple of weeks. 

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New slide. Logos: Travelers Institute (registered trademark), Travelers travelersinstitute.org.