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Lifestyle Pattern Analysis Unveils Recovery Trajectories of Communities Impacted by Disasters

The return of normalcy to the population's lifestyle is a critical recovery milestone in the aftermath of disasters, and delayed lifestyle recovery could lead to significant well-being impacts. Lifestyle recovery captures the collective effects of population activities and the restoration of infrastructure and business services. This study uses a novel approach to leverage privacy-enhanced location intelligence data to characterize distinctive lifestyle patterns and to unveil recovery trajectories after a disaster in the context of 2017 Hurricane Harvey in Harris County, Texas. The analysis integrates multiple data sources to record the number of visits from home census block groups (CBGs) to different points of interest during the baseline period and disruptive period. First, primary clustering using k-means characterized four distinct essential and non-essential lifestyle patterns. Then, secondary clustering characterized the impact of the hurricane into three recovery trajectories based on the severity of maximum disruption and duration of recovery. The results reveal multiple recovery trajectories and durations within each lifestyle cluster, which imply differential recovery rates among similar lifestyle and demographic groups. The findings offer a twofold theoretical significance: (1) lifestyle recovery is a critical milestone that needs to be examined, quantified, and monitored in the aftermath of disasters; (2) the spatial structures of cities formed by human mobility and distribution of facilities and extends the spatial reach of flood impacts on population lifestyles. The analysis and findings also provide novel data-driven insights for public official and emergency managers to examine, measure, and monitor a critical milestone in community recovery trajectory based on the return of lifestyles to normalcy.