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The massive tornado that devastated a large area of Moore, Okla., on May 20 provided scientists and engineers an opportunity to gather critical windstorm information for catastrophe modeling systems.
Catastrophe modeling is based on historical data. While abundant post-loss data is available on hurricanes, there is “lots of room for improvement” when it comes to tornado models, said Alfred P. Tobin, New York-based managing principal and national property leader for Aon Risk Solutions, a unit of Aon P.L.C.
Scott Stransky, Boston-based senior scientist at AIR Worldwide Corp., led a team of engineers and scientists that spent a day examining seven different damaged sites in Moore during the first weekend after the tornado struck.
AIR Worldwide is updating its thunderstorm model, with an anticipated June 2014 release, and will incorporate much of the information gathered from Moore.
The biggest challenge for tornado modelers is the twister's long, narrow size that caused severe damage in a concentrated area.
While AIR Worldwide is not fundamentally changing how it models such natural disasters, “one thing that we probably will change is the function of this decay from the center,” Mr. Stransky said, referring to how the damage lessens the farther away from the center.
The team that went to Moore determined the location of the tornado's center, which helped them figure out how a tornado's wind strength decays.
“This was a perfect ... laboratory setting for us to get that information,” Mr. Stransky said. “It's lessons learned.”