Severe weather and climate events such as floods, heat waves, and tornadoes, are the most frequent and devastating extreme events among all types of natural disasters in the United States. Climate scientists predict that extreme weather phenomena are expected to increase in both frequency and intensity under ongoing global climate change. Given the anticipated growing risks and detrimental impacts on people of weather extremes, it is imperative to investigate past disaster incidents and uncover community characteristics that reflect vulnerability and resilience, in order to implement informed proactive policies to minimize future human impacts. To this end, my dissertation, titled “Socio-Political Nature of Disaster Impact: Tornadoes, Floods, and Extreme Heat” examines three types of extreme weather events in each of three chapters to investigate the determinants of community vulnerability to disasters and evaluate the life-saving benefits of disaster mitigation measures and practices. Each of three chapters empirically examine tornadoes, floods, and extreme heat events at the subnational level – I consider the disaster experiences in about 3,100 counties in the contiguous United States. The integrated view of the physical, social, economic, and political elements of multi-faceted disaster vulnerability guides the empirical analyses. Each chapter employs different types of panel methods to address the county heterogeneity and potential simultaneity between governmental actions and disaster vulnerability – such as Poisson Fixed Effects (PFE), the Control-function(CF) approach within the Correlated Random Effects (CRE) framework, and the Random Trend Model (RTM). Throughout the three chapters, I present evidence that people most vulnerable to disasters are those who have weaker economic and social bases; lower income, poverty, lower education, and poor housing quality increase disaster vulnerability. Also, I find that urbanization intensifies disaster vulnerability while learning from past experiences enhances communities’ coping capacity. In the case of heatwaves, vulnerability is greater in counties with higher proportions of elderly, the very young, and non-white populations. Findings suggest that the socially isolated elderly and the elderly living in poverty are the most heat-vulnerable population sub-groups. My dissertation pays special attention to the examination of the degree to which local government plays a role in reducing the potential disaster fatalities. The first chapter on tornadoes and the second chapter on floods shed light on the role of local government resources devoted to public safety, protection, and welfare in mitigating disaster fatalities. The second chapter on floods also provides a new evaluation of the role of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) in preventing and reducing the loss of human life from flooding as an important ex-ante disaster management scheme. The third chapter provides significant evidence on the benefits of the government-initiated Heat Island Mitigation (HIM) measures in lowering heat intensity as well as reducing the loss of life from extreme heat. Taken together, my research increases our understanding of the socio-political nature of the disaster vulnerability. Moreover, this study underscores the need for more proactive and precautionary public measures and policies to counter the potential harmful effects of the growing risk of weather extremes. Findings of this research may inform targeting efforts designed to protect and assist the most vulnerable populations and provide guidance to future disaster mitigation policies at the local, state and national levels.
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