The faces of disaster

Natural hazards like hurricanes can take a higher than average toll to life and property on certain population groups, such as the elderly. A dataset that highlights vulnerable populations in hazard mitigation plans was awarded a 2024 DesignSafe Dataset Award, which recognized the dataset's diverse contributions to natural hazards research.

“The impetus of this dataset was to understand how specific populations are discussed in state hazard mitigation plans,” said Mary Angelica Painter, a research associate at the Natural Hazard Center of the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder).

Lori Peek (PI, CU Boulder), Melissa Villarreal (U. S. Forest Service), Chandrika Singh (CU Boulder), co-published with Painter the award-winning dataset PRJ-4241 | State Hazard Mitigation Plans and Social Vulnerability. The dataset is publicly available on the NHERI DesignSafe cyberinfrastructure.

Socially vulnerable populations are at higher risk from natural and human-caused hazards because of societal, political, historical, and cultural factors that make them more susceptible to disastrous events such as hurricanes or the steadily increasing risks from climate change of flooding and drought.

Some examples of socially vulnerable populations indexed in the dataset are the elderly, children, people with disabilities, pregnant women/ pregnant people, and the LGBTQAI+ community.

The dataset research team compiled a list of 41 socially vulnerable population descriptors. With the help of a research team of students, they reviewed over 35,000 pages of 55 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) -approved state hazard mitigation plans, which included the 50 U.S. states and five territories, populating the dataset with indications of inclusion and descriptions of populations that are discussed contextually as vulnerable. The dataset they authored includes qualitative data such as quotes from the state plans that add context to the data, as well as quantitative data on whether socially vulnerable populations were mentioned.

FEMA requires every state and U.S. territory to develop and update every five years a state hazard mitigation plan to qualify for grants and other mitigation and response funding.

The hazards mitigation plans cover sectors such as emergency management, economic development, land use and development, housing, health and social services, infrastructure, and natural and cultural resources.

The plans were found to vary widely — some short and others much longer and more detailed. Some include more planning for human-caused hazards and disasters, such as from terrorism and cyber-attacks, while others mainly focused on natural hazards.

What’s more, the articulation of socially vulnerable populations was shown to vary in state hazard mitigation plans.

“Almost all plans include elderly and children. Most plans include people with disabilities. Plans might include other populations, such as refugees or immigrants, while other vulnerable populations aren't mentioned at all. Veterans are not mentioned in any hazard mitigation plan, specifically as a vulnerable population, for example,” Painter said.

“The purpose of our data set is to show the variability of populations that states have considered and maybe offer some ideas to other states of what populations they could include in their plans,” Painter added.

Vulnerability considerations of the LGBTQAI+ community are one example showing the variability in their inclusion in state hazard mitigation plans, according to the dataset.

“Only three states mention LGBTQAI+ populations in the context of hazards and their own specific vulnerabilities. Maybe a state that's looking to update their hazard mitigation plan can look at the examples of a state like California, and how they mention that or even other population groups,” Painter said.

State hazard mitigation plans are constantly evolving, in part because of FEMA requirements for updates every five years.

“What makes this study interesting is that FEMA just added a new requirement in April of last year. Hazard mitigation plans also must include mentions of climate change, whereas some hazard mitigation plan before this time do not. And they also must mention equity, albeit a broad concept. States can use social vulnerability and related measures and concepts to add in the component of equity,” Painter said.

DesignSafe helped the researchers design, document with a Digital Object Identifier, curate, store, and make accessible to other researchers their dataset through an easy-to-use web portal.

“DesignSafe has always been there to answer any questions about documentation and getting research published online, which has been endlessly helpful. We’d like to give a shout out to the DesignSafe team, especially data curator Maria Esteva, who's been great in helping us with the challenges of data design in this social science research,” Painter said.

Painter related that social science research can be difficult for data publication because of the diversity of the fields of research and the different methodologies used.

“The great thing about natural hazards and disaster research is that it's very multi-disciplinary. But that can make it difficult for understanding standardization — that’s where DesignSafe really walked us through,” Painter said.

DesignSafe helped Painter’s team with data standards such as establishing a data dictionary; variable data definitions; finding the right type of documents to store data; helpful readme files, and more.

“Nothing replaces going outside, meeting, talking to your communities, and figuring out what communities need in terms of hazard mitigation,” Painter concluded. “However, data can be very useful for finding places to start. For example, social vulnerability indices, which are included in many of these plans, help map where these populations are. We can then understand risks to physical infrastructure, access to resources, and what hazards they are exposed to.”

DesignSafe is a comprehensive cyberinfrastructure that is part of the NSF-funded Natural Hazard Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) and provides cloud-based tools to manage, analyze, understand, and publish critical data for research to understand the impacts of natural hazards. The capabilities within the DesignSafe infrastructure are available at no-cost to all researchers working in natural hazards. The cyberinfrastructure and software development team is located at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin, with a team of natural hazards researchers from the University of Texas, the Florida Institute of Technology, and Rice University comprising the senior management team.

NHERI is supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, including the DesignSafe Cyberinfrastructure, Award #2022469.