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This paper aims to examine potential causes of bankruptcy as they relate to hurricane damage. Investigate whether hurricanes result in personal bankruptcy filings due to real property damages. Strengthen existing descriptive results by using fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS).

Lagged FMOLS model is used with data from states that suffered hurricane damage between 2000 through 2020. FMOLS controls for various financial distresses that can cause bankruptcy filings.

Bankruptcy is usually filed for within one year of a hurricane. Changes in house prices and hurricane severity were significant indicators of bankruptcy filings. However, the divorce rate, commonly thought of as a primary reason for bankruptcy, is insignificant.

Data was available on a state level for the independent variables. Hurricane damage needed to be financially significant enough for inland flooding to be measurable and influential.

Establishes that financial distress comes from several sources, not just home damage. Financial distress is highly correlated with whether a home was insured. Divorce does not cause bankruptcy filings.

Federal flood insurance programs should be reexamined. Having a broader all-risk homeowner policy could reduce the number of households that file for bankruptcy after a hurricane.

Existing research uses descriptive statistics and obtains mixed findings regarding the association between hurricane damage and bankruptcy filings. The FMOLS approach provides clarity about this association.

Communities around the world continued to be pummelled by devastating natural disasters with little to no relenting to the amount of loss of life, and property damage suffered by businesses and individuals. The United Nation reports huge financial commitments in 2010 to the tune of $109 billion in recovery in an effort of securing some semblance of normalcy. This paper aims to highlight the tremendous accomplishments created by the passing of the Post‐Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act within the US Federal Emergency Management Agency and to introduce a new concept titled Synergistic Protection that encourages citizens and businesses with special skills, equipment, or unique talents to volunteer by enrolling their contact information into a database maintained by the local emergency manager.

The methodology that was used to construct this paper was traditional scholarly research and observations of the Washington, DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. A personal account of what was said and that occurred was used.

This is a concept paper and did not use qualitative or quantitative procedures to conclude findings, but after the data were reviewed professional assessments were made to recommend a new way of involving citizens and private industry in disaster preparedness training and planning.

The practical implications of the concept of Synergistic Protection being applied globally is tremendous and has relevance the world over. It is the author's goal for every country to start using aspects of Synergistic Protection in designing disaster and crisis management planning.

The social implications of applying Synergistic Protection are huge. If and when applied people living in communities will start to form bonds out of necessity and need, and not shy away from one another because of petty differences. I believe that Synergistic Protection is needed around the world.

Synergistic Protection is completely original and both copyrighted and trademark by the author.

A seemingly obvious solution to improve resilience of built structures facing natural hazards is enhanced structural integrity. One program designed to achieve this is the building code effectiveness grading schedule (BCEGS) which rates communities on the strength and enforcement of local building codes. However, little is known on how well this program has fared in terms of community participation. The purpose of this study is to use the BCEGS program in Florida (a hurricane at-risk state) to provide tangible evidence of whether participatory achievement occurred and identify characteristics that predict high performance in the program.

Data is used from the Insurance Services Office, a division of Verisk Analytics to compare characteristics of communities with high levels of participation to communities with lower levels of participation. This is done using descriptive statistics and regression models.

Communities more likely to have high BCEGS ratings are more urban, have higher wealth and a younger, more educated population. Discussed also is the role risk exposure and public policy play in both maintaining higher ratings and overall improvement in BCEGS ratings across time.

Identifying what motivates communities to enhance their construction standards is a useful tool in attracting interest to enhance resilience. The results show that resilience can be improved by public policy initiatives and knowledge by communities of their risk profile.

BCEGS data is proprietary, so no study of this type has been conducted on what motivates communities to adopt higher standards in the strength and enforcement of local building codes.

The purpose of this paper is to address the inefficiency in resource allocation for disaster relief procurement operations. It presents a holistic and reconfigurable procurement auctions‐based framework which includes the announcement construction, bid construction and bid evaluation phases.

The holistic framework is developed in a way that auctioneers and bidders compete amongst each other in multiple rounds of the procurement auction. Humanitarian organization in disaster locations are considered as auctioneers (buyers) and suppliers are considered as bidders.

Unique system parameters (e.g. announcement options, priority of items, bidder strategies, etc.) are introduced to represent the disaster relief environment in a practical way. The framework is verified by simulation and optimization techniques using the system characteristics of the disaster relief environment as an input. Based on the parameters and their values, behavioural changes of auctioneers and suppliers are observed.

Combining the three phases of procurement auctions is unique both in the auction literature and in the disaster relief research, and it helps the humanitarian organizations supply the immediate and long‐term requirements in the disaster location more efficiently.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast the behavior of a US homeowner exposed to hurricane risk with government policies designed to limit hurricane losses. Owners limit these losses by selecting structural improvements or mitigation and wind and flood insurance.

The paper uses mitigation costs, hurricane probabilities, and insurance premiums to frame rational cost‐minimizing choices for the homeowner.

First, even though nationwide hurricane damage costs are large, the cost‐minimizing response for an individual property owner may be to buy no mitigation or structural improvements, no flood insurance and minimal wind insurance, as probabilities of strong hurricanes striking particular locations are extremely low. Second, additional insurance is a less costly defense than structural improvement, even under much higher insurance premiums and hurricane strike probabilities. Third, federally subsidized flood insurance may reduce the effectiveness of government programs encouraging structural mitigation.

The last few years were underscored by the catastrophic damages of Hurricanes‐Katrina, Ike and Wilma. Enormous costs suffered by the public and private sectors could have been avoided with greater mitigation by homeowners. This paper examines the financial incentives for such mitigation. Those incentives are examined in a previously untested framework.

The purpose of this research is to analyze a county’s housing market over 23 years to determine what impact, if any, multiple hurricanes have had on the residential real estate market.

This research uses a hedonic price model to determine the impacts that multiple hurricanes had on housing values.

There was a significant and negative countywide impact on housing sales values in the 1996, which can directly be attributed to three hurricanes impacting Brunswick County. Economic factors, rather than hurricanes and related storms, are more likely to impact sales values in all other years.

This research is limited only to single-family home sales in Brunswick County, North Carolina, from 1984 to 2007. The model does not include multi-family residential uses.

Unlike many other areas that have been studied regarding natural disasters, Brunswick County has been hit multiple times by hurricanes and related storms, providing some insight into the long-term implications of the impact of storms on housing values over an extended period of time. The practical implication is that despite the likelihood of hurricanes and proximity to the ocean, people are willing to pay to live in coastal areas, even an area with a history of repeated direct and indirect strikes by hurricanes.

Unlike much of the peer-reviewed research that looks at a single occurrence of a natural disaster, this research looks at the impacts of multiple hurricanes on a single county over 23 years to determine what impact, if any, these storms have on the overall housing market.

This study aims to examine the linkage between bankruptcy filings and hurricane events. Several independent variables related to local district court bankruptcy filings are examined. The primary question posed is whether Category 3,4 and 5 hurricanes result in personal bankruptcy filings due to the real property and other damage that ensures.

Landfall hurricanes in Florida from 2001 through 2018 were examined by using the fully modified least square regression model. Descriptive statistics include elasticity measures that show statistics prior and post the passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse and Prevent and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA).

The elasticity of housing prices was a useful statistic in explaining bankruptcy filings. Regression results indicate that bankruptcy filing occur within one year of a serious hurricane. The regression model found hurricane events and housing price trends were significant variable when predicting district court bankruptcy filings.

BAPCPA targets fraud under Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings. Unfortunately, this also had the unintended consequence of discouraging legitimated filings due to the lowering of the marginal benefit associated with filing when the “means test” is applied.

Lack of flood insurance coverage and stagnant real estate prices could limit the desirability of filing under Chapter 13 resulting in an inventory of damaged properties being foreclosed.

Prior researchers relied on a descriptive approach by using percentage rates to quantify the association between hurricane damage and bankruptcy filings. By using the fully modified regression-based approach, the study herein establishes that filings occur approximately a year after the household experiences the real property loss and identifies other casual factors that influence the decision to file.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the lodging market and the state economy affected by Hurricane Sandy have recovered from the damages sustained. Specifically, this study examines and predicts the influence of revenue management key performance indicators (KPIs) on recovery and lodging revenue in the affected states and the states’ economies. These KPIs include average daily rate (ADR), occupancy and revenue per available room (RevPAR).

Secondary financial data were collected for the states most damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Subsequently, pooled Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression was conducted combining time and non-time dependent variables based on the states and radius from the landfall.

The results indicate that although the lodging market and the state economies have recovered since the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy, certain KPIs still need to improve.

Managerial implications are suggested in terms of dynamic pricing, market-based recovery, the KPIs, federal aid and facility management.

Despite its importance, research on the effects of climate change in the hospitality context has not actively progressed after Hurricane Katrina. Time and non-time dependent variables are combined in this analysis to gain a richer understanding of the impacts and recovery of KPIs on the revenue in the lodging market and the revenue on states’ economies. Additional analysis based on the radius from the landfall of the hurricane was performed to examine the impact and recovery based on geographical proximity.