Data Measures for Community Resilience

National Register of Historic Places

RESTORE Goal: Community Resilience – Priority Attribute: Historical Sites

DEFINITION A numeric attribute that represents the counts of historic places within each hexagon.

Data Summary

  • Data Source: NPS National Register of Historic Places (Stutts 2018)

  • Unit: Count (#)

  • Default Utility Function: The greater the number of historic places (higher score), the better for conservation

  • Area of Interest Aggregation: Maximum score from the hexagons inside the area of interest

  • Threshold: Discrete utility value ranging from 0 to 1 (see Table 12)

Workflow:

  1. Perform spatial join of the data with hexagon boundaries.

  2. Obtain the counts within each hexagon.

Table 12. Number of historic places

Value

Utility

0

0

1

0.75

2

0.9

>=3

1

National Heritage Area

RESTORE Goal: Community Resilience – Priority Attribute: Historical Sites

DEFINITION A percent attribute that stands for the proportion of heritage area within each hexagon.

Data Summary

  • Data Source: NPS National Heritage Area (NPS 2018)

  • Unit: Percentage (%)

  • Default Utility Function: The greater proportion of national heritage area (higher score), the better for conservation

  • Area of Interest Aggregation: The score for the area of interest is the summed score from the hexagons inside the area of interest

  • Threshold: Continuous utility value ranging from 0 to 1

Workflow:

  1. Clip the national heritage area data to hexagon boundaries.

  2. Perform spatial join to obtain the area within each hexagon.

Proximity to Socially Vulnerable Communities

RESTORE Goal: Community Resilience – Priority Attribute: Vulnerability

DEFINITION This measure indicates the proximity to communities that are socially vulnerable according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Social Vulnerability Index. This is a binary attribute that represents the spatial relationship between a hexagon and areas that have been identified by NOAA as having medium or higher social vulnerability. Any area of interest that directly intersects or is within a 1 hex (1 km2) distance of a socially vulnerable community would score a 1, and areas of interest not within a 1 km2 distance of a socially vulnerable community would score a 0.

Data Summary

  • Data Source: NOAA Social Vulnerability Index [(Emrich and Cutter 2011), (University of South Carolina’s Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute 2010)]

  • Unit: Index

  • Default Utility Function: Areas of interest within 1 km2 of a socially vulnerable community (score = 1), are better for conservation

  • Area of Interest Aggregation: The score for the area of interest is the highest binary score (i.e., maximum) from the hexagons that make up the area of interest

  • Threshold: Binary utility value (0 and 1)

    • Area of interest within 1 km2 of a socially vulnerable community = 1

    • Area of interest beyond 1 km2 of a socially vulnerable community = 0

Workflow:

  1. Clip NOAA’s Social Vulnerability Index to hexagon boundaries.

  2. Perform spatial join to obtain the Social Vulnerability Index within 1 km of each hexagon.

Community Threat Index

RESTORE Goal: Community Resilience – Priority Attribute: Vulnerability

DEFINITION The Community Threat Index (CTI) comes from the Coastal Resilience Evaluation and Siting Tool (CREST), by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) in collaboration with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and NatureServe (NFWF et al. 2019) and includes datasets that show coastal flood and severe storm hazards on the landscape. The CTI is a raster based model (30 × 30 meters) with a cumulative scoring of inputs, which include: storm surge scenarios, sea level rise scenarios, flood prone areas, soil erodibility, impermeable soils, areas of low slope, and geologic stressors (i.e., landslide susceptibility and land subsidence).

Data Summary

  • Data Source: NFWF Coastal Resilience Evaluation and Citing Tool, Community Threat Index (NFWF et al. 2019)

  • Unit: Index

  • Default Utility Function: The greater the threat to the area of interest (higher score), the better for conservation

  • Area of Interest Aggregation: Maximum score from the hexagons inside the area of interest

  • Threshold: Discrete utility function ranging from 0 to 1

    • 0 (no data), 1 (low risk), 10 (high risk)

Workflow:

  1. Transform the CTI raster data to a vector shapefile.

  2. Perform spatial join to obtain the CTI within each hexagon.

Social Vulnerability Index

RESTORE Goal: Community Resilience – Priority Attribute: Vulnerability

DEFINITION This measure reflects the inherent characteristics of a community or population group that impact their ability to respond to and recover from any number of natural, technological, and social hazards. The Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) is derived from 43 key variables directly linked to the vulnerability factors.

Data Summary

  • Data Source: Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) from The Water Institute

  • Unit: Index

  • Default Utility Function: The higher social vulnerability of the community (higher score), the better for conservation

  • Area of Interest Aggregation: Average score from the hexagons inside the area of interest

  • Threshold: Discrete utility values ranging from 0 to 1 with increments of 0.25

    • 0 : 0

    • 0 - 27.72 : 0.25

    • 27.72 - 38.81 : 0.5

    • 38.81 - 49.90 : 0.75

    • 49.90 - 88.70 : 1

Workflow:

  1. Use the layer for Socioeconomic Scale Composite Social Vulnerability

  2. Using the output raster, run zonal statistics to determine average social vulnerability index for each hexagon

References

Emrich, C.T., and S.L. Cutter. 2011. “Social Vulnerability to Climate-Sensitive Hazards in the Southern United States.” J. Weather Clim. Soc. 3.

NFWF, NOAA, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; National Environmental Modeling, and Analysis Center. 2019. “NatureServe Coastal Resilience Evaluation and Siting Tool.” https://resilientcoasts.org/#Home.

NPS. 2018. “National Heritage Areas.” https://www.nps.gov/subjects/heritageareas/index.htm.

Stutts, M. 2018. “National Register of Historic Places. National Register Properties Are Located Throughout the United States and Their Associated Territories Around the Globe.” https://irma.nps.gov/Datastore/Reference/Profile/2210280.Univ.SC. 2010. “NOAA Office for Coastal Management Social Vulnerability Index 2010 (Census Tracts).” https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/data/sovi.html.

PreviousData Measures for Living Coastal & Marine ResourcesNextData Measures for Gulf Economy

Last updated

Was this helpful?