Mapping social vulnerability to enhance housing and neighborhood resilience

TLDR

Social factors shape coastal communities’ capacity to anticipate, respond, resist, and recover from disasters, with existing literature highlighting the roles of race/ethnicity and poverty. The study uses Galveston, TX, to evaluate whether social vulnerability mapping can uncover inequalities in community disaster responses. The authors mapped pre‑Hurricane Ike social vulnerability across Galveston and compared the resulting patterns to response, impact, recovery resource allocation, and early rebuilding outcomes. Households and neighborhoods identified as vulnerable experienced delayed evacuation, greater damage, fewer recovery resources, and slower, lower‑volume repair and rebuilding, supporting the use of vulnerability mapping to improve emergency management, hazard mitigation, and disaster recovery planning, thereby strengthening resilience and reducing inequalities. Keywords: low‑income housing, demographics, minorities, location; see coastalatlas.tamug.edu for data.

Abstract

Abstract Social factors influence the ability of coastal communities and their populations to anticipate, respond, resist, and recover from disasters. Galveston, TX, offers aunique opportunity to test the efficacy of social vulnerability mapping to identify inequalities in the ways that different parts of the community may react to a disaster. We describe spatial patterns of social vulnerability prior to 2008's Hurricane Ike and compare them to outcomes related to response, impact, recovery resources, and early stages of the rebuilding. Households and neighborhoods identified using vulnerability mapping experienced negative outcomes: later evacuation, a greater degree of damage sustained, fewer private and public resources for recovery, and slower and lower volumes of repair and rebuilding activity. Findings support using community vulnerability mapping as a tool for emergency management, hazard mitigation, and disaster recovery planning, helping communities to reduce losses and enhance response and recovery, thereby strengthening community resilience and reducing inequalities. Keywords: low-income housingdemographicsminoritieslocation Notes 1see coastalatlas.tamug.edu 2Similar lines of thought were evident in what has been termed the Environmental Justice research (e.g., Bullard 1990; Bryant and Mohai 1992; Pastor et al. 2006). 3The this typology and the following discussion draws heavily from two excellent reviews of the disaster and hazards literature related to race/ethnicity (Fothergill, Maestas, and Darlington 1999) and poverty (Fothergill and Peek 2004).