Assessing Weather Event Damage in Forensic Engineering: Data Sources and Challenges
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51501/jotnafe.v42i1.887Keywords:
Hail, tornado, forensic engineering, forensic meteorology, weather, weather event, damage assessment, meteorological data, NOAA, win, NCEI, NCEI-SED, SPC-LSR, NWSAbstract
Forensic engineering evaluations often involve assessing damage from weather events such as thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. A crucial aspect of these evaluations is verifying whether the reported weather event occurred on or around the specified date and determining relevant meteorological parameters from the available historical data. Two primary sources of historical meteorological data are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center Local Storm Reports (SPC-LSR) and the National Centers for Environmental Information Storm Events Database (NCEI-SED). These databases rely on reports from various sources and may sometimes provide imprecise or inconsistent data. Therefore, forensic engineers should not rely solely on these sources but instead use them in conjunction with data or observations from multiple other sources.
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