Date of Award:

12-2022

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Environment and Society

Committee Chair(s)

Peter D. Howe

Committee

Peter D. Howe

Committee

Mariya Shcheglovitova

Committee

Jessica Schad

Abstract

Disaster events, such as floods, wildfires, and earthquakes increasingly cause damage to livelihoods, the economy, and the environment. Preparing for these events to occur is an important part of increasing resilience, however studies have found that households are generally not prepared for these events to happen. When it comes to identifying where these households are, there is typically no related tool or series of maps that can indicate location. In order to fill this gap, we use public survey data from FEMA to create estimates of household preparedness across a number of actions, such as developing an evacuation plan or participating in a practice drill, on the state, county, and zip-code levels, as well as along an urban-rural gradient. The results from this study find that Utah exhibits higher levels of preparedness than most states, while regionally the southeast near the Gulf of Mexico is more prepared than other regions in the U.S. We also found that rural places are generally more prepared than urban ones. Interactive maps for all actions and scales are provided online for users to find out how prepared their state, county or hometown are.

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