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U.S. Census Bureau
The U.S. Census Bureau released the 2024 Community Resilience Estimates (CRE), which highlight areas in the United States most socially vulnerable to the impacts from natural disasters.
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.
New for this release are the CRE social vulnerability rankings for every county and census tract in the United States by natural hazard type. In addition, estimates for metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas are available for the first time. The CRE includes estimates of the population by level of social vulnerability for the nation, states, core-based statistical areas, counties, and tracts.
Also included are an interactive map and tables highlighting the top 25 most socially vulnerable counties and the top 100 tracts that have at least a “relatively moderate” rating for expected economic losses due to:
| Winter weather (i.e., snow, sleet and freezing rain). |
| Flooding (i.e., coastal flooding and riverine flooding). |
| Hurricanes. |
| Strong wind (i.e., damaging winds exceeding 58 mph). |
| Wildfires. |
| Earthquakes. |
The estimates and rankings are available for download on the CRE datasets
webpage. Estimates data are also available on data.census.gov and the Census API webpage.
Community resilience is the capacity of individuals and households within a community to absorb the external stresses of a disaster. The CRE uses 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year microdata modeled with 2024 population estimates from the Population Estimates Program, 2020 Census Privacy-Protected Microdata File, and Modified Age and Race Census file to measure social vulnerability that may inhibit a community’s ability to recover from a disaster.
Social vulnerability is estimated from 10 ACS topics on poverty, number of caregivers in the household, unit-level crowding, communication barrier, unemployment, disability, health insurance coverage, age, vehicle access, and broadband internet access. Natural hazard ratings come from the March 2023 release of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Risk Index.
