Local wind model in New York City

According to insurance companies, 70-80 % of economic losses due to natural disasters in the world are caused by extreme winds and related water hazards. Wind behavior assessment in vulnerable areas can mitigate the following damages due to the wind. This study introduces a methodology to specify local wind pattern as a function of location in New York City. A variety of methods can be used to obtain localized wind. These include codes of practice, full-scale, wind tunnel or Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) studies. Each of these has their advantages and disadvantages. Due to the considerable numbers of buildings under-study, codes evaluation was selected. The methodology for determining regional wind speeds and wind multipliers from major wind loading standards, focusing on Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures from the American Society of Civil Engineers/ Structural Engineering Institute (7-10) and the Australian Wind Loading Standard AS/NZS 1170.2 (2011) is discussed in this research. Finally, it provides the wind pattern for New York City calculated using the different wind multipliers. Wind multipliers/coefficients can be considered the basis of local wind determination; without them, the local wind would be meaningless. They convert the national scale wind to the local level by incorporating the effects of direction, height and terrain, topography and shielding. Combining these effects can describe the site wind speed in any location.