Casualties from natural disasters may depend on the day of the week they strike. With data from the Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States (SHELDUS), daily variation in hurricane and tornado casualties from 5,043 tornado and 2,455 hurricane time/place events is analyzed. Hurricane forecasts provide at-risk populations with considerable lead time. Such lead time allows s...

Protective actions for hurricane threats are a function of the environmental and information context; individual and household characteristics, including cultural worldviews, past hurricane experiences, and risk perceptions; and motivations and barriers to actions. Using survey data from the Miami-Dade and Houston-Galveston areas, we regress individuals' stated evacuation intentions on these fa...

The US Gulf states are frequently hit by hurricanes, causing widespread damage resulting in economic loss and occasional human fatalities. Current hurricane climatologies and predictive models frequently omit information on the spatial characteristics of hurricane movement—their linear tracks. We investigate the construction of a spatial hurricane climatology that condenses linear tracks to one...

iii ABSTRACT OF THESIS OPTIMISTIC BIAS IN RELATION TO HURRICANE RISK Public officials in the natural disaster field benefit from knowing whether individuals tend to underestimate or overestimate the dangers they could face from future hurricanes. Correcting hurricane risk misperceptions can encourage individuals living in coastal regions to take action and prepare themselves for the next hurric...

BACKGROUND Epidemiological analyses of aggregated data are often used to evaluate theoretical health effects of natural disasters. Such analyses are susceptible to confounding by unmeasured differences between the exposed and unexposed populations. To demonstrate the difference-in-difference method our population included all recorded Florida live births that reached 20 weeks gestation and conc...

The investigation of the effect of El Nino-related variability on hurricane activity has been a popular topic of study. Studies have shown that there are fewer Atlantic Ocean basin hurricanes during an El Nino year than during a La Nina year. Various atmospheric and oceanic parameters that influence hurricane development become significantly altered during an El Nino event, leading to suppresse...

Equations for the prediction of hurricane tracks have been developed by use of statistical methods. Data at sea level, 700 mb., and 500 mb. were selected as predictors. Forecasts are prepared in 12-hr. steps for periods up to 48 hr. The forecast equations have been tested on an operational basis during the 1964 and 1965 hurricane seasons. The accuracy of these forecasts compares favorably with ...

[1] To help understand possible impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse warming on hurricane activity, we assess model-projected changes in large-scale environmental factors tied to variations in hurricane statistics. This study focuses on vertical wind shear (Vs) over the tropical Atlantic during hurricane season, the increase of which has been historically associated with diminished hurricane act...

BACKGROUND Hemodialysis patients experience a high degree of psychosocial impairment. METHODS The psychosocial status of hemodialysis patients after Hurricane Katrina was evaluated using the Hurricane Coping Self-Efficacy (HCSE) measure, the Short Form-12 Health Survey (physical component summary [PCS] and mental component summary [MCS]), and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Short Depress...

Frequent hurricane landfalls along the northern Gulf of Mexico, in addition to causing immediate damage to vegetation, also have long term effects on coastal ecosystem structure and function. This study investigated the utility of using time series enhanced vegetation index (EVI) imagery composited in MODIS product MOD13Q1 for assessing hurricane damage to vegetation and its recovery. Vegetatio...