Mapping social vulnerability to enhance housing and neighborhood resilience

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 housing
• demographics
• minorities
• location

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).