Block-level vulnerability assessment reveals disproportionate impacts of natural hazards across the conterminous United States

Farnaz Yarveysi, Atieh Alipour, Hamed Moftakhari, Keighobad Jafarzadegan and Hamid Moradkhani ()
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Farnaz Yarveysi: University of Alabama
Atieh Alipour: University of Alabama
Hamed Moftakhari: University of Alabama
Keighobad Jafarzadegan: University of Alabama
Hamid Moradkhani: University of Alabama

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract The global increase in the frequency, intensity, and adverse impacts of natural hazards on societies and economies necessitates comprehensive vulnerability assessments at regional to national scales. Despite considerable research conducted on this subject, current vulnerability and risk assessments are implemented at relatively coarse resolution, and they are subject to significant uncertainty. Here, we develop a block-level Socio-Economic-Infrastructure Vulnerability (SEIV) index that helps characterize the spatial variation of vulnerability across the conterminous United States. The SEIV index provides vulnerability information at the block level, takes building count and the distance to emergency facilities into consideration in addition to common socioeconomic vulnerability measures and uses a machine-learning algorithm to calculate the relative weight of contributors to improve upon existing vulnerability indices in spatial resolution, comprehensiveness, and subjectivity reduction. Based on such fine resolution data of approximately 11 million blocks, we are able to analyze inequality within smaller political boundaries and find significant differences even between neighboring blocks.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39853-z

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