Wind Factors are the outcome of the First Street Foundation Wind Model and are derived from the inputs that go into our model.
Wind Factors are outputs of the First Street Foundation Wind Model (FSF-WM) based on the inputs that go into the model. These inputs refer to the datasets used to determine a specific location’s exposure to extreme wind. To promote further research efforts, the majority of information comes from open-source datasets from the U.S. Federal government. Additional local and commercial sources were also used.
Types of data sources used
Wind Factor takes a variety of data sources into consideration, including a number of open government datasets.
Hurricane tracks
- WindRiskTech LLC & Rhodium Group
Historic storm and hurricane events
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) Storm Events Databases provide historic severe wind records, historic tornado records
- NOAA International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) provides historical hurricane records
Climate data sources
- WCRP CMIP6 Global Climate Models (GCMs) using Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) 2-4.5
General data sources
- HAZUS surface roughness coefficients from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
- 2016 United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) National Land Cover Database (NLCD)
- Property-level parcel data is sourced from county-level property assessor records which are collected and standardized by Lightbox, a 3rd party data provider
- Building footprints - Mapbox, sourced from Microsoft Bing and OpenStreetMaps
The First Street Foundation Wind Model is a geospatially-varying wind model, which means it considers how a location’s likely exposure to high-speed winds is affected by climate change’s impacts.
Use Risk Factor to find property-specific wind risk assessments for any U.S. address.