JAVÃûÅ®ÓŹÝ

Dr. Chakraborty is the Principal Investigator at UTEP for a project titled . This project is a collaboration between UTEP and the JAVÃûÅ®ÓÅ¹Ý of Utah, supported by a Rapid Response Research (RAPID) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment Program.

This collaborative project applies a social vulnerability to disasters perspective to the 2021 Texas Winter Storm Uri to advance knowledge of the socially uneven impacts of cascading disasters, and disaster vulnerabilities experienced by subsidized rental housing residents. Winter Storm Uri comprised three arctic fronts that lasted from February 10 to 20, 2021. As numerous Texas counties faced record low temperatures, the state’s largest electric grid operator (Electric Reliability Council of Texas [ERCOT]) lost control of the power supply serving most of Texas, and more than five million people lost access to electricity. More than 69% of the Texas population was without power and 49% without running water at some point during this storm. Uri has caused 130 billion (USD) in economic losses and at least 111 deaths statewide. The purpose of this project was to conduct a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the cascading impacts of Winter Storm Uri on residents of metropolitan Texas. It relies on collecting social survey data regarding households’ experiences and analyzing data from this survey and other secondary sources. The survey underpinning this project was conducted by cellular phone in English and Spanish with 896 randomly selected households residing in counties that comprise eight Texas metropolitan areas: Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, McAllen, El Paso, Beaumont-Port Arthur, and Lubbock. This included 147 households living in US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-assisted rental housing developments and 749 households residing in private (not HUD-assisted) homes.

Student research assistants for this project include Jacob J. Aun from the UTEP Department of Sociology and Anthropology, as well as Eric Goodwin and Kevin Ramos from the JAVÃûÅ®ÓÅ¹Ý of Utah.

This project has resulted in the following publications, presentations, and data products:

PUBLICATIONS:

• Collins T W, Chakraborty J, and Grineski S E, 2023. . DesignSafe-CI. https://doi.org/10.17603/ds2-3q26-td86.
• Grineski S E, Scott M, Collins T W, Chakraborty J, and Ramos K, 2023.  International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 96, 103933; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2023.103933.
• Chakraborty J, Collins T W, and Grineski S E, 2023. Disability and Health Journal, 16(2), 101403; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dhjo.2022.101403.
• Grineski S E, Collins T W, and Chakraborty J, 2022.  Social Science & Medicine, 315, 115523; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115523.
• Grineski S E, Collins T W, Chakraborty J, Goodwin E, Aun J J, and Ramos K, 2022.  American Journal of Public Health; https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307110.

PRESENTATIONS:

• Chakraborty J (Invited Speaker/Panelist), “Climate Change and Persons with Disabilities: Research and Policy Priorities” Harvard Law School Project on Disability: Ensuring Disability Inclusion in the Global Climate Action Agenda (virtual webinar); October 2023.
• Chakraborty J (Invited Speaker/Panelist), "Disability-Inclusive Climate Change Research and Policy Priorities” Wilkes Climate Summit: Impacts on Vulnerable Communities Panel, The Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy, JAVÃûÅ®ÓÅ¹Ý of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; May 2023.
• Chakraborty J (Invited Speaker/Panelist), “Effects of Environmental Hazards on Communities in Northeast Houston” Bridging Diverse Knowledge Systems to Address Flood Risk in Northeast Houston Communities, Gulf Research Program, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Workshop, Houston, TX; April 2023.
• Chakraborty J (invited speaker), "Environmental Justice and Social Vulnerability to Climate-Related Hazards:
  Case Studies from Florida and Texas” Department of Earth, Environmental and Resource Sciences Seminar, JAVÃûÅ®ÓÅ¹Ý of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX; March 2023.
• Collins TW, Grineski SE, Chakraborty J, Goodwin E, Aun J J, and Ramos K. 2022. "Mental Health Disparities after the 2021 Texas Winter Storm” GeoMed 2022, Special Session: A Geospatial Perspective on Environmental Exposure and Human Health (Irvine, CA); October 2022.
• Grineski SE, Collins TW, Chakraborty J, Aun J J, Goodwin E, and Ramos K. 2022. “Environmental Injustice, Health Inequities, and Winter Storm Uri in Texas” 8th JAVÃûÅ®ÓÅ¹Ý of Maryland Environmental Justice and Health Disparities Symposium (College Park, MD); August 2022.
• Grineski SE, Collins TW, Chakraborty J, Goodwin E, Aun J J, and Ramos K* (*presenter). 2022. “Winter Storm Uri as a Cascading Disaster: Inequities in Power and Piped Water Outages among metro-Texans” Environmental Sociology Roundtables. 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (Los Angeles, CA); August 2022.