Anatomy of susceptibility for shelter-in-place households facing infrastructure service disruptions caused by natural hazards

Abstract

This paper provides empirical information for understanding the susceptibility of households to the infrastructure service disruptions caused by natural hazards. Understanding household-level susceptibility is critical to determine the risks associated with staying shelter-in-place during disasters. This information is essential for various stakeholders such as community leaders, emergency planners, and utility managers to prioritize and restore infrastructure services for the public. However, there is limited empirical information regarding the susceptibility of shelter-in-place households to the disruptions of different services. Hence, this study presents an exploratory analysis of empirical data collected from affected communities to identify the influencing factors of the households' susceptibility. We utilized survey data collected from Hurricane Harvey (850 respondents), Hurricane Florence (362 respondents), and Hurricane Michael (583 respondents) to study the anatomy of susceptibility to eight infrastructure service disruptions. The descriptive analysis compared the similarities, such as rating the sewer and water systems as most important services, and differences, such as the varying levels of expectation for the service disruptions, of the three regions impacted by the disasters. Correlation analysis considered which underlying factors, including sociodemographic characteristics, protective actions and adjustments, previous experience and previous damage, social capital, and need for service of individual households along with the contextual and communal factors of the community, such as urbanization and previous disaster declarations, were associated with the ability of residents to respond to and withstand service disruptions. Although there were consistencies in the relationship of influencing factors to the level of susceptibility, the findings highlight that some variation in the influence of these factors was event-specific or service-specific. Finally, the contextual and communal factors of a community can bring unique insights to the anatomy of susceptibility to the service disruptions, as each location has inherent characteristics that would, directly and indirectly, influence households’ susceptibility to service disruptions. These findings provide the necessary empirical information to inform infrastructure prioritization decisions and emergency response actions to reduce the societal impacts of infrastructure service disruptions on vulnerable populations.