Integrating Spatial and Ethnographic Methods for Resilience Research: A Thick Mapping Approach for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Hurricane Maria left unprecedented impacts to communities in Puerto Rico, leaving some without infrastructure services and unable to communicate with family for several months. Toward understanding the forms of community-level resilience that enabled coping, recovery, and adaptation while hard infrastructure systems took time to regain functionality, this paper aims to (1) abductively illuminate the forms of social capital and adaptive capacity that emerged in Puerto Rico during and after Maria, (2) explore how physical variables manifest in community experiences, and (3) illustrate how quantitative and qualitative approaches for resilience assessments can be integrated given the nature of disasters as complex adaptive systems. We leverage a mapping approach by combining ethnographic and geospatial methods into an interactive GeoApp for analysis. A series of signifiers for resilience capacities were developed that are self-coded by participants who share anecdotes regarding Maria, and a series of geospatial indicators (e.g., social capital, elevation, electrical recovery) were layered and aggregated against ethnographic information as “thick maps”. The resulting geo-application facilitates quantitative and qualitative analysis of data at several scales, while enabling qualitative query of collected narratives. For example, it was found that trust in public institutions, local innovation, and community bonding and bridging were key themes for recovery. The multiplicity of mappings available through the application show how top-down assessments can be nuanced by thick data, and how multiple framings can be taken from the same system or place. These findings are important to inform and integrate community-oriented and technocentric solutions toward resilience enhancing measures.