The U.S. Census Bureau has released the 2024 Community Resilience Estimates (CRE), providing new data on areas in the United States that are most socially vulnerable to natural disasters. The CRE highlights factors such as demographic, socioeconomic, and health characteristics that can make communities more susceptible to negative impacts from events like hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and earthquakes.
According to the Census Bureau, “Social vulnerability constitutes various adverse factors that can compound the negative impact of a disaster and that inhibit community resilience. These can be demographic, socioeconomic, or health characteristics of individuals and households in the community. The estimates and rankings are useful for local planners, policymakers, public health officials, disaster management professionals, and community stakeholders who plan mitigation and recovery strategies in the event of a disaster.”
This year’s release introduces social vulnerability rankings for every county and census tract across the country by specific natural hazard types. For the first time, estimates are also available for metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas. The CRE includes population estimates by level of social vulnerability at national, state, core-based statistical area, county, and tract levels.
The release features an interactive map and tables listing the top 25 most socially vulnerable counties as well as the top 100 tracts with at least a “relatively moderate” rating for expected economic losses due to winter weather events (such as snow or freezing rain), flooding (including coastal or riverine flooding), hurricanes, strong winds over 58 mph, wildfires, or earthquakes.
“Community resilience is the capacity of individuals and households within a community to absorb the external stresses of a disaster,” according to information provided by the Census Bureau. “The CRE uses 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year microdata modeled with 2024 population estimates from the Population Estimates Program, 2020 Census Privacy-Protected Microdata File, and Modified Age and Race Census file to measure social vulnerability that may inhibit a community’s ability to recover from a disaster.”
Social vulnerability is measured using ten topics from ACS data: poverty status; number of caregivers in each household; unit-level crowding; communication barriers; unemployment; disability status; health insurance coverage; age distribution; vehicle access; and broadband internet access. Natural hazard risk ratings come from FEMA’s National Risk Index released in March 2023.
Data from this release can be accessed through downloadable datasets on the CRE datasets webpage, data.census.gov, or via the Census API webpage.
