The U.S. Census Bureau released on May 21 the 2024 Community Resilience Estimates for Puerto Rico, providing new data on population vulnerability to disasters across the commonwealth, municipios, and census tracts.
The release is significant because it offers updated information that can help local planners, policymakers, public health officials, and community stakeholders assess how resilient different communities in Puerto Rico may be in the face of natural disasters. The tool aims to support planning for mitigation and recovery strategies when such events occur.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the updated interactive tool allows users to easily identify and map neighborhoods categorized by “low,” “medium,” or “high” social vulnerability. It also incorporates local hazard risks from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Risk Index, which estimates a community’s expected annual economic loss due to natural disasters like hurricanes, landslides, earthquakes, floods, and strong winds.
Social vulnerability in these estimates is determined using ten topics from the annual Puerto Rico Community Survey: poverty status; number of caregivers in households; unit-level crowding; education; employment; disability status; health insurance coverage; age; vehicle access; and broadband internet access.
The methods used for these new Puerto Rico estimates are similar to those applied in stateside estimates released earlier this year. The data is available through both the Census API and data.census.gov.
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