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Laura Szczyrba, Yang Zhang, Duygu Pamukcu, & Derya Ipek Eroglu. (2020). A Machine Learning Method to Quantify the Role of Vulnerability in Hurricane Damage. In Amanda Hughes, Fiona McNeill, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2020 Conference Proceedings – 17th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 179–187). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Accurate pre-disaster damage predictions and post-disaster damage assessments are challenging because of the complicated interrelationships between multiple damage drivers, including various natural hazards, as well as antecedent infrastructure quality and demographic characteristics. Ensemble decision trees, a family of machine learning algorithms, are well suited to quantify the role of social vulnerability in disaster impacts because they provide interpretable measures of variable importance for predictions. Our research explores the utility of an ensemble decision tree algorithm, Random Forest Regression, for quantifying the role of vulnerability with a case study of Hurricane Mar\'ia. The contributing predictive power of eight drivers of structural damage was calculated as the decrease in model mean squared error. A measure of social vulnerability was found to be the model's leading predictor of damage patterns. An additional algorithm, other methods of quantifying variable importance, and future work are discussed.
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