Dr. Jennifer Horney

Dr. Jennifer Horney of Texas A&M University, whose Coastal Resilience Center (CRC) project focuses on tracking long-term disaster recovery, recently published an article on the website The Conversation about the reasons that people don’t evacuate in the face of imminent threats such as hurricanes. In the article, Dr. Horney examines why, in advance of Hurricane Matthew, residents in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina did not heed multiple warnings to evacuate. In South Carolina, for example, estimates indicate that about 35 percent of residents under evacuation orders actually left their homes (the rate in coastal areas like Charleston and Beaufort was closer to 50 percent).

To read the full article, visit http://ow.ly/Rs7J305lnUE.

In her work with the CRC, Dr. Horney collects long-term data on recovery to effectively improve community resilience to future disasters. These data are used to improve the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool, a web-based resource designed to aid local government stakeholders and other end users in tracking the progress and quality of post-disaster recovery.