Tropical cyclone hazards and economic losses in coastal North Carolina

<title>Abstract</title> <p>Tropical cyclones threaten coastal regions through wind, storm surge, and inland flooding, yet risk assessments treat these hazards separately and rarely translate them into building-level losses. We pair 575,453 single-family homes ($443 billion) in eastern North Carolina with a 604-storm synthetic cyclone ensemble and physics-based models resolving wind, surge, and flood fields at 250-m resolution, translated to building-level damages. Separating each hazard’s footprint from its severity reveals a systematic imbalance: wind reaches 62.9% of homes but is mild per event (5.1% mean loss ratio), whereas compound events are rare (0.19% of building–storm records) yet six to nine times more severe and contribute 9.4% of ensemble losses. Wind + flood compounds trace inland riverine corridors missing from surge-focused maps, and because they arise from spatial co-occurrence across the regional portfolio rather than additive damage at single structures, they undermine the diversification underpinning catastrophe insurance. The result is a protection gap: only 34.6% of homes carry wind and 10.2% flood coverage, over half of worst-case losses fall on the uninsured, and every home that cannot afford full coverage is compound-exposed—those most in need of protection are least likely to obtain it.</p>