The U.S. Census Bureau has released the 2024 Community Resilience Estimates (CRE), providing new data on social vulnerability to natural disasters across the United States. The CRE identifies communities that may face greater challenges in recovering from events such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, strong winds, and winter weather.
This year’s release introduces social vulnerability rankings for every county and census tract by specific natural hazard types. For the first time, estimates are also available for metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas. The CRE offers detailed information about populations at different levels of social vulnerability at national, state, local, and tract levels.
An interactive map and tables are included in this release. These highlight the top 25 most socially vulnerable counties and the top 100 tracts with at least a “relatively moderate” rating for expected economic losses due to various natural hazards.
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.”
The CRE uses data from ten American Community Survey topics including poverty rates, number of caregivers per household, housing crowding levels, communication barriers, unemployment rates, disability status, health insurance coverage rates, age distribution within households, vehicle access rates among households without cars or other means of transportation during emergencies or evacuations; as well as broadband internet access which is crucial for receiving timely emergency alerts.
Natural hazard risk ratings used in these estimates come from FEMA’s National Risk Index released in March 2023.
Data from this release is available for download on the CRE datasets webpage as well as through data.census.gov and via the Census API webpage.
“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.”
There was no formal news release associated with this product; it was issued as an informational tip sheet only.
