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Project Overview
Three hurricanes (Dennis,
Floyd, and Irene) impacted the lives and
livelihoods of the citizens of North Carolina
in the Fall of 1999. The cumulative effect of
these storms devastated eastern North Carolina,
but Hurricane Floyd is the storm that caused
the greatest impact on the health and welfare
of individuals, families, and communities in
the region. High winds, heavy rainfall,
flooding, rough seas, and damaging surf
produced by Hurricane Floyd effected Atlantic
coastal states from September 14 - 18, 1999.
Although Floyd weakened from a category 4 to a
category 2 hurricane before it made landfall in
North Carolina on September 16th, its large
size and heavy rainfall caused more damage than
its high winds.
Ten states were
declared major disaster areas including
Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New
Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina,
Virginia, and North Carolina. Hurricane Floyd's
initial impact on North Carolina included 51
deaths, more than 100,000 displaced to
shelters, 7,000 homes destroyed, and 56,000
homes damaged by extensive flooding from
rainfall exceeding 20 inches in most of eastern
North Carolina. Sixty-six North Carolina
counties were declared eligible for Federal
Disaster Assistance while all counties were
eligible for disaster mitigation.
The aftermath of
Hurricane Floyd is still impacting the state of
North Carolina and the counties and communities
"down east". Much of the social science
research conducted not very long ago considered
that disasters rarely played a significant part
in the evolution of society. Recently, social,
historical and ecological studies of disasters
have been correcting this view, emphasizing
that hazards are systematic and recurring
elements of certain environments. Disasters are
one of the more fundamental features to which
individuals and communities must learn respond.
When hazards become activated--turning into
disasters--the degree to which they bring about
a disaster in a society is an index of
adaptation or maladaptation to the environment.
In well-adapted human-environmental
relationships without much socially induced
vulnerability, hazards do not easily become
disasters.
Taking into
consideration the importance of
social-vulnerability, how can geographic
information systems be used to assess the
impact of hurricane Floyd? The goal of the
Impact of Hurricane Floyd Project is to provide
a consolidated resource for researchers and
other parties interested in monitoring and
evaluating the impacts of Hurricane Floyd.
Three specific objectives are
central:
1. To establish an
integrated geographic information system
(IGIS) database that captures the social,
economic, demographic, health, and
environmental impacts and geographic extent
of the Hurricane Floyd disaster in eastern
NC. This database will allow short-term
monitoring and longer-term evaluation of the
health and economic impacts in flood-stricken
areas.
2. To collect impact
data on the socio-demographically vulnerable
populations in the effected
region.
3. To use data
already collected by federal, state, and
local agencies and an integrated geographic
information science approach to produce an
accurate series of regional-scale and
local-scale flood extent and impact
maps.
Funding for this project
was provided by the Howard W. Odum
Institute for Research in the Social
Sciences, the Carolina
Population Center, the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of North
Carolina Institute on Aging. For more
information, please contact the Carolina
Population Center Spatial Analysis
Unit
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