Despite a growing literature on disaster resilience, our understanding of what makes rural areas resilient remains limited. Existing literature mainly focuses on urban areas and characterizes rural areas as more vulnerable than urban areas without recognizing the possibility of rural resilience. Furthermore, there is a lack of robust and consistent indicators focusing both on the vulnerability and resilience of rural areas. This study is advances scientific research on disaster resilience in rural areas. The specific aims are to (1) develop an innovative, multi-faceted, place-based vulnerability and resilience index with an exclusive focus on rural areas (called the Rural Vulnerability and Resilience Index or RVRI in short); (2) identify the consequences of vulnerability and resilience in terms of disaster recovery (in the context of the 1993 Midwest Floods, 1996 Southern Plains Drought, and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina); and (3) develop policy options for rural areas on enhancing disaster resilience.
The Resilient Rural America project significantly enhances the abilities of policy makers and practitioners by providing new knowledge of how disaster vulnerability and resilience change over time and across rural areas in the U.S. It will help them tailor policies to reduce the vulnerabilities of each rural area and make more informed funding allocation decisions at the state and federal levels to reduce disparities in preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation capacities.
Intellectual Merit Despite a growing literature on disaster resiliency, our understanding of what makes rural areas resilient remains limited. Existing literature mainly focuses on urban areas and characterizes rural areas as more vulnerable than urban areas without recognizing the possibility of rural resilience. Furthermore, there is a lack of robust and consistent indicators focusing on resilience of rural areas. To address this gap, the research team has developed a new, multi-faceted, place-based index called the Rural Vulnerability and Resilience Index (RVRI) and conducted an ArcGIS analysis to spatially examine the distribution of the rural vulnerability and resilient characteristics. RVRI is a composite index that is similar in nature to the Human Development Index developed by the United Nations Development Programme. It takes into account four measurable dimensions of rural resilience: (a) Housing Characteristics; (b) Socio-Economic Characteristics; (c) Social Capital; and (d) Place Based Characteristics. Prior to developing the index, the project team reviewed the resilience literature and conducted in-depth case studies in the following rural counties affected by three different disasters: (1) 2005 Hurricane Katrina: Washington Parish, Louisiana, and Pearl River County, Mississippi (2) 1996 Southern Plains Drought: Reagan and Ward Counties, Texas; and, (3) 1993 Midwest Floods: Randolph County, Illinois, and Allamakee County, Iowa. The team determined these counties based on their long-term recovery performance in the aftermath of disasters (one high and one low performer was selected for each disaster). The case studies involved conducting of focus groups with community residents (14 focus groups, n=69 participants total) and semi-structured interviews with policy makers and community leaders (n=70 participants total) as well as participant observation and review of secondary sources. Important findings of the project include the following. First, rural counties across Middle America (the Great Plains and the state of Texas) seem to be less resilient in the face of disasters given their RVRI scores. Rural counties that are in the High resilience category are dispersed across the U.S. and are not spatially concentrated. Second, vulnerable populations have had a significant negative influence on the valuation of new housing units in both rural and urban areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, but the nature of the population affecting valuation has been distinctive (African Americans in rural areas versus the poor, elderly, and Hispanics in urban areas). Third, the most significant drivers of housing growth in Katrina affected rural communities were domestic migration, percentage of mobile homes and social capital. Fourth, Katrina-affected rural counties that had a higher percentage of the elderly, a higher percentage of mobile homes and higher median household values were disadvantaged in terms of post-disaster recovery. Broader Impacts The RVRI will substantially improve the ability of disaster scholars and policy makers to systematically compare resilience over time and across rural areas in the U.S. Such comparative ability will help policy makers make more informed funding allocation decisions at the federal and state levels to: (a) reduce disparities between rural areas in their preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation capacities; and (b) identify the type of programs that are needed to strengthen the resilience of rural areas (For instance, if a rural area is found to be less resilient due to its lack of social capital, one of the dimensions of the RVRI, then resilience policies could focus on strengthening of the social capital stock in that rural area.) Furthermore, our project has offered several policy lessons for policy makers on how to make rural areas more resilient. It has also enhanced the classroom experience of students at Florida International University (FIU) as insights from the project have been incorporated into the curriculum of Public Administration Department’s certificate program on emergency management. Lastly, the project has provided several graduate students with invaluable research experience as these students worked on every aspect of the project, from data collection, to interviews and focus groups, and to model calibration. Project Outcomes Key outcomes of the project are the following. First, the project has produced the RVRI, the first index which measures the disaster resilience of rural areas to our knowledge. Second, the project has contributed to an enhanced understanding of rural areas in the U.S on which there is limited scholarly literature. Third, the project has helped produce better measures of disaster recovery (e.g., combined use of the quasi-experimental method with difference-in-differences (DID) estimators as opposed to the bounce-back or the quasi-experimental design approaches). Fourth, the project team put together a longitudinal dataset on counties affected by the 1993 Mid-West Floods, 1996 Southern Plains Drought, and 2005 Hurricane Katrina for conducting quantitative analysis. Fifth, the project team developed a bank of qualitative data, from interviews with policy makers and community leaders, and focus groups of community residents. Sixth, the project team has disseminated the results of the project through peer reviewed publications and conference presentations (12 total).
