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1. Understanding post-disaster population recovery patterns

   https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2019.0532  

   Yabe, Takahiro ; Tsubouchi, Kota ; Fujiwara, Naoya ; Sekimoto, Yoshihide ; Ukkusuri, Satish V. ( February 2020 , Journal of The Royal Society Interface)

   null (Ed.)

   Despite the rising importance of enhancing community resilience to disasters, our understandings on when, how and why communities are able to recover from such extreme events are limited. Here, we study the macroscopic population recovery patterns in disaster affected regions, by observing human mobility trajectories of over 1.9 million mobile phone users across three countries before, during and after five major disasters. We find that, despite the diversity in socio-economic characteristics among the affected regions and the types of hazards, population recovery trends after significant displacement resemble similar patterns after all five disasters. Moreover, the heterogeneity in initial and long-term displacement rates across communities in the three countries were explained by a set of key common factors, including the community’s median income level, population, housing damage rates and the connectedness to other cities. Such insights discovered from large-scale empirical data could assist policymaking in various disciplines for developing community resilience to disasters. 

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2. Overemphasis on recovery inhibits community transformation and creates resilience traps

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27359-5  

   Rachunok, Benjamin ; Nateghi, Roshanak ( December 2021 , Nature Communications)

   Building community resilience in the face of climate disasters is critical to achieving a sustainable future. Operational approaches to resilience favor systems’ agile return to the status quo following a disruption. Here, we show that an overemphasis on recovery without accounting for transformation entrenches ‘resilience traps’–risk factors within a community that are predictive of recovery, but inhibit transformation. By quantifying resilience including both recovery and transformation, we identify risk factors which catalyze or inhibit transformation in a case study of community resilience in Florida during Hurricane Michael in 2018. We find that risk factors such as housing tenure, income inequality, and internet access have the capability to trigger transformation. Additionally, we find that 55% of key predictors of recovery are potential resilience traps, including factors related to poverty, ethnicity and mobility. Finally, we discuss maladaptation which could occur as a result of disaster policies which emphasize resilience traps.

    

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3. Spatial Assessment of Community Resilience from 2012 Hurricane Sandy Using Nighttime Light

   https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13204128  

   Xu, Jinwen ; Qiang, Yi ( October 2021 , Remote Sensing)

   Quantitative assessment of community resilience is a challenge due to the lack of empirical data about human dynamics in disasters. To fill the data gap, this study explores the utility of nighttime lights (NTL) remote sensing images in assessing community recovery and resilience in natural disasters. Specifically, this study utilized the newly-released NASA moonlight-adjusted SNPP-VIIRS daily images to analyze spatiotemporal changes of NTL radiance in Hurricane Sandy (2012). Based on the conceptual framework of recovery trajectory, NTL disturbance and recovery during the hurricane were calculated at different spatial units and analyzed using spatial analysis tools. Regression analysis was applied to explore relations between the observed NTL changes and explanatory variables, such as wind speed, housing damage, land cover, and Twitter keywords. The result indicates potential factors of NTL changes and urban-rural disparities of disaster impacts and recovery. This study shows that NTL remote sensing images are a low-cost instrument to collect near-real-time, large-scale, and high-resolution human dynamics data in disasters, which provide a novel insight into community recovery and resilience. The uncovered spatial disparities of community recovery help improve disaster awareness and preparation of local communities and promote resilience against future disasters. The systematical documentation of the analysis workflow provides a reference for future research in the application of SNPP-VIIRS daily images. 

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4. Posttraumatic Stress Symptom Trajectories Among Children After Disaster Exposure: A Review

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22242  

   Lai, Betty S. ; Lewis, Rayleen ; Livings, Michelle S. ; La Greca, Annette M. ; Esnard, Ann‐Margaret ( November 2017 , Journal of Traumatic Stress)

   Natural disasters, such as hurricanes and floods, are increasing in frequency and scope. Youth exposed to disasters are at risk for developing posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). However, not all youth who report initially elevated PTSS report persistent PTSS that last beyond the first three to six months postdisaster. Thus, it is crucial to understand how and why youth differ in their patterns of PTSS. This study reviewed the literature on children's postdisaster PTSS, evaluating the typical number and types of patterns for children's PTSS trajectories, as well as risk and protective factors predicting trajectory membership. This review identified eight empirical studies on youth PTSS trajectories following natural disasters; these studies included 8,306 children aged 3 to 18 years. All studies identified resilience, recovery, and chronic trajectories. Evidence for a delayed trajectory was mixed. Proportions of children falling into each trajectory varied widely across studies, but overall, resilience was the most prevalent trajectory. These findings were consistent across study factors (i.e., analytic strategy, assessment timing, and study selection criteria). Female gender, disaster exposure, negative coping, and lack of social support were significant risk factors for chronic trajectories across several studies. Future research should combine individual level participant data across studies of children's responses to disasters to better understand PTSS trajectories.

    

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5. An integrated approach to analyze equitable access to food stores under disasters from human mobility patterns

   https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.16873  

   Wei, Zhiyuan ; Mukherjee, Sayanti ( July 2024 , Risk Analysis)

   Limited access to food stores is often linked to higher health risks and lower community resilience. Socially vulnerable populations experience persistent disparities in equitable food store access. However, little research has been done to examine how people's access to food stores is affected by natural disasters. Previous studies mainly focus on examining potential access using the travel distance to the nearest food store, which often falls short of capturing the actual access of people. Therefore, to fill this gap, this paper incorporates human mobility patterns into the measure of actual access, leveraging large‐scale mobile phone data. Specifically, we propose a novel enhanced two‐step floating catchment area method with travel preferences (E2SFCA‐TP) to measure accessibility, which extends the traditional E2SFCA model by integrating actual human mobility behaviors. We then analyze people's actual access to grocery and convenience stores across both space and time under the devastating winter storm Uri in Harris County, Texas. Our results highlight the value of using human mobility patterns to better reflect people's actual access behaviors. The proposed E2SFCA‐TP measure is more capable of capturing mobility variations in people's access, compared with the traditional E2SFCA measure. This paper provides insights into food store access across space and time, which could aid decision making in resource allocation to enhance accessibility and mitigate the risk of food insecurity in underserved areas.

    

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