Visualizing Community Resilience to Disasters for Small Areas in the United States

Oregon Convention Center 

The Census Bureau's Community Resilience Estimates (CRE) provide estimates of socioeconomic vulnerability to disasters for every county and Census tract in the United States. To produce the CRE, Census Bureau statisticians employ small area estimation techniques to generate counts and percentages of the population with specific vulnerabilities such as physical disability, advanced age, and access to vehicles and broadband internet. The primary audience for the CRE is diverse and includes public and private sector data users, state and local governments, members of the media, and federal partner agencies involved in emergency management. The data dissemination strategy for the CRE must meet the needs of this diverse constituency, striking a balance between rich, in-depth data and ease of use. To meet this challenge, the CRE program maintains a public-facing interactive tool that distills complex information on U.S. communities into a simple risk classification scheme. This presentation will describe the motivations and design choices for the interactive data visualization(s) associated with the CRE along with emerging research on socioeconomic vulnerability to disasters.