Modeling disaster risk for marginalized groups

Startup OneConcern is helping identify inequities in risk exposure for historically marginalized communities. Working with the city of Seattle, the company modeled structural building damage resulting from three different hypothetical earthquakes. The results: "the bigger the simulated earthquake, the more drastic the inequity. As earthquake magnitude increased, so did the burden felt by minorities and lower-income groups." In one simulation of a 7.2 shaker on the Seattle Fault, Black residents were predicted to have almost twice as much exposure to the most severe damage as white residents, and "over half of the Black population in Seattle would" be affected.

This project points towards a future where expanded ability to undertake complex hazard simulations—critically, "the importance of incorporating multiple earthquake scenarios into overall assessments of risk"— can give governments the information they need to being systematically reducing risk that is inequitably borne by marginalized groups.