The constant natural hazards threat led the engineering community to develop more effective decision making tools, for use by the public and private sectors. An increasing number of stakeholders are no longer only interested in the performance of a single building exposed to deterministic loads but also of a group of buildings subjected to probabilistic demands. This requirement has created a significant challenge for the engineers that face a twofold problem, namely to estimate the performance of heterogeneous groups of structures subjected to uncertain loads. Within this context the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation has sponsored the development of the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model (FPHLM). This paper presents the vulnerability component of the commercial-residential module of the FPHLM. Its first stage, devised to project insurance losses for single-family residential buildings, was certified by the Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology. The model was later expanded to deal with commercial-residential low-rise (1-3 stories) and mid-high rise buildings (4+ stories). This paper presents and discusses the methodology to estimate the vulnerability of low and mid/high rise buildings along with selected results.
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