News: Interactive story map shows hurricane impacts and Florida’s vulnerable populations (Florida 2017)

The Self-Represented Litigation Network (SRLN) helped The Florida Bar Foundation create a new data resource that reveals the impact of Hurricane Irma on Florida and the vulnerable populations who could potentially need civil legal aid in the recovery, and generally. With our Geographic Information Systems (GIS) expertise, we worked with The Foundation to develop an interactive story map that provides access to geospatial data from FEMA, HUD, the CDC, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Florida Department of Children and Families.

As users scroll down, they can click on maps to see data for specific geographic areas. Data include hurricane impacts, social vulnerability, housing and location affordability, FEMA applications, D-SNAP/Food for Florida applications, immigrant and limited English proficient populations, poverty below 125 percent, renters and uninsured people.

We also developed an innovative Legal Vulnerability Index, which displays the sum of multiple at-risk indicators for each county’s population and is part of the story map.

The story map is interactive. Clicking on a location will open a pop-up with detailed data for that location. Information on the data sources is provided throughout.

For each county, the Legal Vulnerability Index shows the sum of several key at-risk factors indicating the likelihood that residents will need civil legal aid to recover from Hurricane Irma.

The Foundation has encouraged its grantees to use the resources in the story map in their strategic planning, grant writing, advocacy, collaboration and decision-making regarding the allocation of resources.

To learn more about SRLN's GIS support to The Foundation, visit: https://thefloridabarfoundation.org/interactive-story-map-shows-hurricane-impacts-floridas-vulnerable-populations/.

To view and interact with the story map, visit: https://arcg.is/CCDzi.

For more press on the story map: visit https://accesstojustice.net/2017/11/09/simply-brilliant-florida-bar-and-srln-maps-show-hurricane-impacts-and-legal-vulnerability/.