Modeling Property Value Loss in a City Due to Terrorist Bombings

This paper presents a systems approach to determining the economic loss due to property damage resulting from a terrorist bombing in an American city. San Antonio, TX, is used as an example, but aspects of interest are the same as other cities (e.g. New York, Madrid, London). Existing data found in county property appraisal databases is used to produce a value map of the downtown portion of the city. A geometric representation of the city is used along with computational fluid dynamic (CFD) technology to simulate various bombing events and provide blast loadings on the various buildings. The results from the simulations are combined with damage criteria, which allows for estimations of the property damage and resulting loss. The results pinpoint locations where the loss is maximized due to a combination of the property value and the blast profiles, which are driven by the specific urban layout. Further work is suggested where principle components, such as Euclidian distance define the bulk of the causative factors.