Mobile phone data reveals the importance of pre-disaster inter-city social ties for recovery after Hurricane Maria

• DOI: 10.1007/s41109-019-0221-5
• Publication Date: 2019-10-30T22:23:13Z
• Authors: Takahiro Yabe; Satish V. Ukkusuri; P. Suresh C. Rao
• Keywords: Mobile phone; Disaster Recovery

Abstract Recent disasters have shown the existence of large variance in recovery trajectories across cities that experienced similar damage levels. Case studies such events reveal high complexity process cities, where inter-city dependencies and intra-city coupling social physical systems may affect outcomes unforeseen ways. Despite implications understanding processes after for many domains including critical services, disaster management, public health, little work been performed to unravel this complexity. Rather, works are limited analyzing modeling as independent entities, largely neglected effect connectivity on each city. Large scale mobility data (e.g. mobile phone data, media data) enabled us observe human patterns within with spatial temporal granularity. In paper, we investigate how both well forms contribute performances disasters, through a case study population 78 Puerto Rican counties Hurricane Maria using location data. Various network metrics used quantify types play an important role effective post-disaster recovery. We find connectivity, which is measured by pre-disaster patterns, crucial quicker Maria. More specifically, had more influx outflux people prior hurricane, were able recover faster. Our findings highlight importance fostering between prepare effectively future disasters. This paper introduces new perspective community resilience literature, take into account rather than entities.