Analyzing Recovery Aid Concentration in North Carolina Following Hurricane Florence

Keywords: disaster recovery, hurricanes, risk, social vulnerability
Session Type: Virtual Lightning Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 78

Abstract

North Carolina has experienced increasingly destructive hurricanes in a shorter period of time, including Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence in 2018, which is out of the ordinary historically. This is indicative of predictions that the state will exhibit progressively worsening damage from hurricanes as a result of climate change, and is also illuminative of a changing pattern in the North Carolina hurricane landscape – the increasing potential for these hurricanes to happen successively. The increasing reality of North Carolina as a landscape of rising disasters is stressing a recovery and resilience system that is already struggling to appropriately support communities and has faced significant equity concerns. This project analyzes the recovery landscape (via four federal recovery programs) after Hurricane Florence in North Carolina to identify trends in disaster recovery aid concentration. The analysis targets the divergences in aid concentration after controlling for various physical damage drivers to explore the salience of social and community variables, and the influence of Hurricane Matthew, in predicting these divergences.