Evolution of vulnerability of communities facing repeated hazards

Authored by Takeru Igusa, Seth D Guikema, Allison C Reilly, Laiyin Zhu

Date Published: 2017

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0182719

Sponsors: United States National Science Foundation (NSF)

Platforms: MATLAB

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Pseudocode

Model Code URLs: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182719.s003

Abstract

The decisions that individuals make when recovering from and adapting to repeated hazards affect a region's vulnerability in future hazards. As such, community vulnerability is not a static property but rather a dynamic property dependent on behavioral responses to repeated hazards and damage. This paper is the first of its kind to build a framework that addresses the complex interactions between repeated hazards, regional damage, mitigation decisions, and community vulnerability. The framework enables researchers and regional planners to visualize and quantify how a community could evolve over time in response to repeated hazards under various behavioral scenarios. An illustrative example using parcellevel data from Anne Arundel County, Maryland-a county that experiences fairly frequent hurricanes-is presented to illustrate the methodology and to demonstrate how the interplay between individual choices and regional vulnerability is affected by the region's hurricane experience.

Tags

Agent-based models Decisions Climate-change Insurance Hurricane damage Florida Power-system Natural disaster risk Wood-frame houses Flood damage