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Abstract An environmental event that damages housing and the built environment may result in either a short‐ or long‐term out‐migration response, depending on residents' recovery decisions and hazard tolerance. If residents move only in the immediate disaster aftermath, then out‐migration will be elevated only in the short‐term. However, if disasters increase residents' concerns about future risk, heighten vulnerability, or harm the local economy, then out‐migration may be elevated for years after an event. The substantive aim of this research brief is to evaluate hypotheses about short‐ and long‐term out‐migration responses to the highly destructive 2005 hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. The methodological aim is to demonstrate a difference‐in‐differences (DID) approach analysing time series data from Gulf Coast counties to compare short‐ and long‐differences in out‐migration probabilities in the treatment and control counties. We find a large short‐term out‐migration response and a smaller sustained increase for the disaster‐affected coastal counties.
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Simulating post-disaster temporary housing needs for displaced households and out-of-town contractors
Residential damage from major disasters often displaces local residents out of their homes and into temporary housing. Out-of-town contractors assisting in post-disaster housing reconstruction also need housing, creating additional pressure on the local housing stock. Communities should thus prepare for a surge in temporary housing demand to minimize the impact on the local residents and to expedite housing recovery efforts. Computational models can support recovery planning. This article introduces an agent-based simulation framework to estimate the workforce demand and the joint temporary housing needs of contractors and displaced households. The main agents are households seeking to repair their homes, local contractors, and out-of-town contractors. Out-of-town contractor agents come into the community if the labor and housing markets are favorable. The framework can be used to evaluate the resulting challenges and benefits of interventions aimed at attracting out-of-town contractors to expedite housing recovery. We present a case study on the housing recovery of the city of San Francisco after hypothetical M 6.5, M 7.2, and M 7.9 earthquakes. A shortage of contractors is shown to bottleneck the reconstruction if no out-of-town contractors are recruited. Conversely, out-of-town contractors increase the likelihood of temporary housing shortages. These results highlight the need to plan for shortages of reconstruction labor and temporary housing during recovery.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2053014
- PAR ID:
- 10466287
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Earthquake Spectra
- Volume:
- 38
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 8755-2930
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2922 to 2940
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/87552930221112690
