The U.S. Census Bureau has released the 2024 Community Resilience Estimates (CRE), identifying areas in the United States that are most socially vulnerable to natural disasters. The CRE measures social vulnerability based on demographic, socioeconomic, and health factors that can increase a community’s risk and reduce its ability to recover from disasters.
This year’s release introduces social vulnerability rankings for every county and census tract in the country, organized by different types of natural hazards. For the first time, estimates are also available for metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas. The data show population levels of social vulnerability at national, state, regional, county, and tract levels.
The new data include an interactive map and tables that 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 winter weather events like snow or freezing rain, flooding (both coastal and riverine), hurricanes, strong winds exceeding 58 mph, wildfires, and earthquakes.
These estimates aim to assist local planners, policymakers, public health officials, disaster management professionals, and other stakeholders in planning mitigation strategies and recovery efforts following disasters.
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.”
Community resilience is defined as “the capacity of individuals and households within a community to absorb the external stresses of a disaster.” The CRE uses data from multiple sources including the 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year microdata modeled with 2024 population estimates from the Population Estimates Program as well as files from previous censuses to assess factors such as poverty rates; number of caregivers per household; crowding; communication barriers; unemployment; disability status; health insurance coverage; age distribution; vehicle access; and broadband internet access.
Natural hazard ratings are based on information from FEMA’s National Risk Index released in March 2023.
All datasets are available for download on the CRE datasets webpage, as well as on data.census.gov and through the Census API webpage.
