Spatial Analysis of Unmet Disaster Needs for Housing and Food: A Case Study of Floods in Texas, U.S

Disasters create obstacles to meeting basic needs in communities. Although studies have addressed developing better means of assessing flood risk and vulnerability, limited research has considered matching people's unmet needs to access available resources and services over time across locations during flood-related disasters. This study identifies specific types and frequencies of two basic disaster-related unmet needs—housing and food—and spatially analyzes these by location to determine vulnerable communities during Texas’ spring 2015 floods. The Texas 2-1-1 Network provided a database of disaster-related callers’ locations and needs recorded statewide per day, May–June 2015. Disaster-related unmet needs (N = 4,880) for housing (24%) and food (8%) were analyzed by location to determine vulnerable communities during these record-breaking floods throughout Texas. Mapping of unmet need volume per county differed from hotspot locations adjusted by population size to control for urban bias. Volume of housing and food unmet needs were higher in flooded metropolitan counties of east- and central-Texas. After adjusting for population size, Houston remained a hotspot for housing and food unmet needs but many rural counties were shown to be highly vulnerable as well. The spatial analysis helps to target resource allocations to disaster-affected communities more equitably and effectively based on the type of unmet needs and location of access barriers in real-time during disasters. This enables a greater understanding of variations in allocating resources to enhance the resiliency of vulnerable populations.