STEM Speaker Series: “Post Disaster Housing Stages: A Markov Chain Approach to Model Sequences and Duration Based on Social Vulnerability” with Dr. Sara Hamideh

Posted on March 9, 2021 by Clara Tran

Date: 03/09/2021

Time: 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Location
Zoom

Description

Housing recovery is an unequal and complex process presumed to occur in four stages: emergency shelter, temporary shelter, temporary housing, and permanent housing. This talk summarizes research work that questions the four-stage typology and examines how different types of shelter align with multiple housing recovery stages given different levels of social vulnerability. I will also present a Markov chain model of the post disaster housing recovery process that focuses on the experience of the household. The model predicts the sequence and timing of a household going through housing recovery, capturing households that end in either permanent housing or a fifth possible stage of failure. The probability of a household transitioning through the stages is computed using a transition probability matrix (TPM). The TPM is assembled using proposed transition probability models that vary with the social vulnerability of the household. Monte Carlo techniques are applied to demonstrate the range of sequences and timing that households experience going through the housing recovery process. A set of computational rules are established for sending a household to the fifth stage, representing a household languishing in unstable housing. This predictive model is exemplified in a virtual community, Centerville, where following a severe earthquake scenario, differences in housing recovery times exceed four years. The Centerville analysis results in nearly 5% of households languishing in unstable housing, thereby failing to reach housing recovery. Through discussion of these findings I will highlight the disparate trajectories experienced by households with different levels of social vulnerability and provide recommendations for more equitable post disaster recovery policies.

Biography

Dr. Sara Hamideh is an assistant professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences’ Sustainability Division at Stony Brook University. Her research interest is post-disaster recovery and community resilience. She has studied recovery of different housing types, public participation in recovery, vulnerable populations and public housing through quantitative longitudinal modeling and qualitative analysis of planning decisions and processes.

Dr. Hamideh is also a researcher in the Center of Excellence for Community Resilience at Colorado State University funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). She has conducted longitudinal and interdisciplinary modelling of housing recovery in seasonal and year-round housing markets in tourist-based communities based on physical and social vulnerabilities. In another line of research, she looks at the role of social vulnerability and stigma in access to recovery decision making and participation in planning processes.

Dr. Hamideh has published on public housing after disasters, showing how being vulnerable implies less control and representation in decisions about one’s recovery. In the rural Midwest, she studied resilience of small towns to shrinking population, developing a new paradigm for rural smart shrinkage in a collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Hamideh teaches courses in disaster resilience, sustainable communities, environmental planning, and planning analytical methods.