Local mitigation strategy (LMS) - Volusia County Government

SECTION 6: VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT6.11 DROUGHTVolusia County is uniformly vulnerable to drought. Drought is typically associated with crop damage, andnot necessarily the built environment (i.e., improved property). However, research (as noted in theHazards Profiles section) has shown that drought conditions have caused wildfires in 1985 and 1988.Losses were estimated based on occurrences that were reported to the NCDC 8 .To estimate losses due to extreme drought, NCDC historical drought loss data for occurrences in theCounty were used to develop an extreme wind stochastic model. In this model: Losses were obtained and scaled for inflation; Average historic extreme wind damageability was used to generate losses for historicalthunderstorm wind events where losses were not reported; Expected annualized losses were calculated through a non-linear regression of historical data;and Probabilistic losses were scaled to account for would-be losses where no exposure/instrumentwas present at the time of the event.Table 6.11 shows total exposure and potential annualized property losses and percent loss ratiosresulting from drought for Volusia County. Although, the annualized losses are $0, it should be noted thatdrought conditions can exacerbate wildfire potential. Wildfire losses are not quantified in thisassessment, as drought related (i.e., wildfire) losses are reported separately. Wildfire exposure and lossesare provided in this vulnerability assessment as a separate hazard. The probability of drought events inVolusia County is high.8 It is possible that additional extreme wind events may have occurred since 1950 that were not reported to NCDC and are not accounted for inthis analysis.Volusia County Multi-jurisdictional Local Mitigation StrategyFebruary 20106:25