Hazard Exposure Heterophily: A Latent Characteristic in Socio-Spatial Networks Influencing Community Resilience

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of hazard-exposure heterophily in socio-spatial networks, revealing how social ties between dissimilar hazard-exposed populations influence community resilience, especially highlighting vulnerabilities in low-income flood-prone areas.

Contribution

It defines hazard-exposure heterophily, develops a method to measure it using socio-spatial data, and demonstrates its significance in understanding community resilience to hazards.

Findings

Lower-income areas exhibit lower hazard-exposure heterophily.

High hazard-exposure homophily may hinder resource sharing and recovery.

Spatial variation of heterophily impacts community resilience.

Abstract

We present a latent characteristic in socio-spatial networks, hazard-exposure heterophily, to capture the extent to which populations with similar hazard exposure could assist each other through social ties. Heterophily is the tendency of unlike individuals to form social ties. Conversely, populations in spatial areas with significant hazard exposure similarity, homophily, would lack sufficient resourcefulness to aid each other to lessen the impact of hazards. In the context of the Houston metropolitan area, we use Meta's Social Connectedness data to construct a socio-spatial network in juxtaposition with flood exposure data from National Flood Hazard Layer to analyze flood hazard exposure of spatial areas. The results reveal the extent and spatial variation of hazard-exposure heterophily in the study area. Notably, the results show that lower-income areas have lower hazard-exposure heterophily possibly caused by income segregation and the tendency of affordable housing development to be located in flood zones. Less resourceful social ties due to high hazard-exposure homophily may inhibit low-income areas from better coping with hazard impacts and could contribute to their slower recovery. Overall, the results underscore the significance of characterizing hazard-exposure heterophily in socio-spatial networks to reveal community vulnerability and resilience to hazards.