The U.S. Census Bureau has released the 2024 Community Resilience Estimates (CRE), identifying areas across the United States that are most socially vulnerable to natural disasters. The new release provides social vulnerability rankings for every county and census tract in the country, broken down by specific types of natural hazards.
For the first time, estimates are also available for metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas. The CRE data includes information on population vulnerability at various geographic levels, such as nation, state, core-based statistical areas, counties, and tracts.
An interactive map and tables are part of this release, showing the top 25 most socially vulnerable counties and the top 100 tracts with at least a “relatively moderate” rating for expected economic losses from events like winter weather, flooding, hurricanes, strong winds, wildfires, and earthquakes.
Social vulnerability is determined by several factors that may increase negative outcomes during disasters. These include demographic characteristics such as age or disability status; socioeconomic indicators like poverty or unemployment; household attributes including crowding or number of caregivers; health insurance coverage; access to vehicles; communication barriers; and broadband internet availability. The CRE uses data from the 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) alongside other Census Bureau datasets to measure these vulnerabilities. Hazard ratings are based on FEMA’s National Risk Index from March 2023.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau: “Community resilience is the capacity of individuals and households within a community to absorb the external stresses of a disaster.”
All estimates and rankings can be accessed via the CRE datasets webpage, as well as through data.census.gov and the Census API webpage.
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