Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0
Title:
Social Risk Index to Hurricanes in the Coastal Regions of Rhode Island
Abstract:
A commonly accepted framework of mass disaster evacuation postulates the dependency on resilience and on exposure of the risk posed to groups by a threat. Resilience relates to the material and conceptual resources available within reach or through the larger community. Exposure varies with such factors as location relative to the threat agents' pathway, magnitude and scope over time. Also as commonly accepted is the chronic lack of resources and the dependence on public means that afflicts the disenfranchised segments of a population. Clearly, to mitigate the disparities in evacuation risk across social boundaries, it becomes imperative that the community at large makes available tangible and intangible resources to its disenfranchised segments. A risk analysis helps assess who, where, and due to which lack of resources face what risk. A scheme for the allocation of resources can then be contemplated. This study ranks and compares the risk posed by hurricanes to the coastal towns of Rhode Island. To this end, it proposes a conceptual framework for assessing risk under hurricane threat. It then assesses a hurricane risk index using the socio-economic indicators of resilience that prevail within the hurricane evacuation zones in each coastal town. The empirical data necessary to this assessment is gleaned from disaster-related literature, emergency management agencies and readily available GIS databases. The article in essence, exposes the social inequities that result in disparities in resilience among towns located within the hurricane evacuation zones of coastal Rhode Island.
Source(s):
Transportation Research Board (TRB) 86th Annual Meeting, University of Rhode Island. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.
Date: 2007
Author:
Campbell, Thomas, Hunter, Levesque
Keywords:
Hurricane/Tropical storm
Evacuation
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