Understanding the Loss in Community Resilience due to Hurricanes using Facebook Data

Significant negative impacts are observed in productivity, economy, and social wellbeing because of the reduced human activity due to extreme events. Community resilience is an important and widely used concept to understand the impacts of an extreme event to population activity. Resilience is generally defined as the ability of a system to manage shocks and return to a steady state in response to an extreme event. In this study, aggregate location data from Facebook in response to Hurricane Ida are analyzed. Using changes in the number of Facebook users before, during, and after the disaster, community resilience is quantified as a function of the magnitude of impact and the time to recover from the extreme situation. Based on the resilience function, the transient loss of resilience in population activity is measured for the affected communities in Louisiana. The loss in resilience of the affected communities are explained by three types of factors, including disruption in physical infrastructures, disaster conditions due to hurricanes, and socio-economic characteristics. A greater loss in community resilience is associated with factors such as disruptions in power and transportation services and disaster conditions. Socioeconomic disparities in loss of resilience are found with respect to median income of a community. Understanding community resilience using decreased population activity levels due to a disaster and the factors associated with losses in resilience will enable us improve hazard preparedness, enhance disaster management practices, and create better recovery policies towards strengthening infrastructure and community resilience.