Disaster Resilience and Recovery

Getting Back to Normal After Extreme Weather: Houston-Area Residents’ Recovery Following Hurricane Beryl and Other Major Storms of 2024

This study examines the short- and long-term recovery of Houston-area residents following Hurricane Beryl and other severe weather events occuring between April and July 2024.

Hurricane Beryl: Community Response and Resilience

This snapshot looks at early recovery efforts and feelings of resilience among Houston and Harris County residents after Hurricane Beryl.

Storm Preparedness: Actions of Houston-Area Residents Ahead of Hurricane Beryl

This brief provides a descriptive overview of disaster preparedness ahead of and during the 2024 hurricane season.

The 2025 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston

The 2025 State of Housing report highlights Harris County and Houston’s intersecting challenges around affordability, flooding, extreme heat, poor air quality, insufficient housing stock, and the rising cost of insurance to protect households from these vulnerabilities.

Houston and Harris County Disaster Preparedness and Attitudes Leading Up to the 2024 Hurricane Season

This research study examines the current levels of both perceived and actual disaster preparedness among Houston and Harris County residents, as well as contextual and sociocognitive predictors of each.

Hurricane Harvey and Student Homelessness (Briefs 1 and 2)

Brief 1 of this two-part series examines the characteristics of students who became homeless due to Hurricane Harvey. Brief 2 explores the educational outcomes of these students.

Rising flood insurance costs may be another blow to Houston’s affordability

Hurricane season is here, and with it comes a familiar feeling of dread in the Greater Houston area, particularly about floods. But more than five years after Hurricane Harvey, Houstonians may be less inclined to buy flood insurance because of cost increases that have begun to roll out in the last year, with the latest data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency showing that prices could go up by 75% in Harris County alone.

How a former landfill could help fight floods and reimagine a swath of southwest Houston

A proposal to transform a former landfill in southwest Houston into a mixed-use development with a flood control component recently caught the attention of statewide planners who recognized it for its contributions to resilience.

Federal report calls out civil rights inequities in Hurricane Harvey’s aftermath

In the wake of two historically devastating storms in 2017, financial aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development contributed to an increase in wealth inequality.

Harris County flood task force hopes ‘many ways of knowing’ will inform a vision for equitable resilience

Water connects us, yet too often our region’s ongoing relationship with water presents itself as flooding that wreaks havoc and devastates all in its path. In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, many efforts have emerged to try to rebuild our relationship with water from one of harm to one of resilience.

While we fix our flood infrastructure, let’s also improve mental health care and strengthen communities

Natural disasters are increasingly common each year, affecting infrastructure and contributing to economic, social, health, and psychological hardships. When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017, it quickly amassed $125 billion in damages, displacing over a million people and their homes. Along with the economic toll of a disaster event, mental health concerns carry a cost that is difficult to measure.

From rainfall totals to oral histories, Hurricane Harvey data offers multiple portraits of a disaster

The Kinder Institute’s Urban Data Platform warehouses over 50 datasets related to Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath. These resources can help researchers, agencies and organizations work toward ways to prevent and withstand the worst effects of the storms to come.

Houston is still reckoning with the biggest lessons from Hurricane Harvey

When it hit five years ago this week, Hurricane Harvey was an unprecedented disaster: 68 people dead, 200,000 homes damaged or destroyed, a half-million cars wiped out, $125 billion in damage.

In ‘More City than Water,’ Houston tells its Hurricane Harvey story. Will we listen?

Flood survival stories are a Houston shibboleth, a test of membership. Make it through a devastating downpour, and you are one of us. And everyone who lived in the Houston area in August 2017 has a Hurricane Harvey story. For some, it was another entry in a collection of flood stories, depending on how long they lived here and where; for others, it was their first, a rude awakening to very real vulnerabilities.

After Hurricane Harvey, flood insurance created windfalls and fault lines for the middle class

Friendswood, a close-knit suburb southeast of Houston that routinely makes lists for being the “best place to raise a family,” also serves as a case study for how flaws in the federal approach to flood insurance and disaster recovery aid resulted in fractured outcomes even among similarly situated middle-class neighbors after Hurricane Harvey.