The FEMA publication 386-2, Understanding Your Risks: Identifying Hazards and Estimating Losses, provides guidance and worksheets for calculating losses. You can use HAZUS-MH to estimate vulnerability of each structure and determine estimated impacts of an incident. Professional engineers have a number of processes, books, and resources that they use to estimate damage. Damage estimates should be based on specific types of construction. For example, if a warehouse is damaged, they can look at information specific to warehouses, and the estimation differs from damage to another type of structure such as an office building.

You can learn more about HAZUS-MH and GIS by visiting the links provided on the Resources page of the Toolkit.

The estimation performed in this step enables you to determine which assets could potentially face the most damage and which hazard could bring about the greatest losses. This information will help you determine where to focus resources following a hazard to try to lessen the impact on your community.

Click this link to view a sample loss estimation form (review.c2ti.com/FEMA LCMS/IS0559/lesson2/assets/01_02_140.pdf)