Access to Essential Services: A Critical Factor for Predicting Recovery and Quantifying Resilience

Area of Science:

• Disaster resilience research
• Community recovery science
• Geospatial analysis of essential services

Background:

• Understanding the link between essential service access and community recovery is limited.
• Traditional household recovery data is often survey-based, lacking scale and scope.
• Availability of essential service facilities is not consistently recorded.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between access to essential services and household recovery times after a disruptive event.
• To utilize location-based services (LBS) data for estimating facility availability and recovery.
• To model the influence of service access on recovery, considering social vulnerability and storm impacts.

Main Methods:

• Approximation of essential service facility availability using location-based services (LBS) data.
• Estimation of household recovery times post-Hurricane Irma in Southwest Florida (2017).
• Statistical modeling incorporating social vulnerability, storm parameters, and infrastructure outages.

Main Results:

• Power, cell service, and school outages were the most significant factors influencing recovery.
• Access to essential services was a key predictor of recovery trajectory.
• The study quantified the importance of various outage types and service accessibility.

Conclusions:

• Access to essential services is a critical metric for predicting community recovery and evaluating resilience.
• Infrastructure outages, particularly power, cell service, and schools, significantly impact recovery.
• Policy and planning should prioritize improving access to essential services for enhanced disaster preparedness and response.