Decoding the Pulse of Community during Disasters: Resilience Analysis Based on Fluctuations in Latent Lifestyle Signatures within Human Visitation Networks

TL;DR

This study analyzes how Hurricane Ida affected community lifestyles in Louisiana by tracking mobility data, revealing significant disruptions, rapid recoveries for essential services, and long-term lifestyle changes to inform disaster resilience strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using motif models to characterize and cluster human lifestyle signatures from mobility data during disasters, highlighting their fluctuations and recovery patterns.

Findings

Healthcare facilities recovered quickly post-disaster

Lifestyle patterns showed long-term changes after the hurricane

Essential and non-essential facilities both influence community resilience

Abstract

Examining the impact of disasters on life activities of populations is critical for understanding community resilience dynamics, yet it remains insufficiently studied in the existing literature. In this study, we leveraged data from more than 1.2 million anonymized human mobility communications across 30 parishes in Louisiana to construct a temporal network that tracks visitation to places from which we characterized human lifestyle signatures before, during, and after Hurricane Ida in 2021. Utilizing the motif model, we distilled complex human lifestyles into identifiable patterns and clustered them into classes: commute, healthcare, dining out, and youth-oriented lifestyle. We defined two metrics to evaluate disruption and recovery fluctuations in lifestyle patterns during the perturbation period compared to the steady period: 1) frequency (daily number of motifs), and 2) proximity (daily average distance of motifs). The results indicate significant dynamics in lifestyle patterns due to the hurricane, with essential facilities (e.g., healthcare) demonstrating a swift recovery. The study underscores the heterogeneity of locations visited and the necessity of integrating both essential and non-essential facilities into disaster response initiatives. Furthermore, our study reveals sustained changes in lifestyle patterns, highlighting the long-term impact of the hurricane on daily life. These insights demonstrate the significance of examining lifestyle signatures and their fluctuations in evaluating disaster resilience patterns for affected communities. The outcomes of this study are poised to aid emergency managers and public officials to more effectively evaluate and monitor disaster impacts and recovery based on changes in lifestyle patterns in the community.