Date of Award

Summer 2025

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Geography

First Advisor

Susan Cutter

Abstract

In recent years, large-scale disaster events have dominated headlines. As the world faces an increasing number of such disasters, it is crucial to understand their impacts beyond immediate monetary losses. Disasters not only directly impact individuals and businesses but may also reshape the spatial patterns of the regional economy. Through a case study of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana, this study examines how disaster events influence regional economic specialization patterns and contribute to uneven impacts across economic supersectors and geographies. Expanding on previous methodologies, this study incorporates temporal analysis tools to identify and investigate case studies of economic change. Using location quotients as a measure of economic specialization, I find that many supersectors—Natural Resources and Mining (NRM), Construction (CON), Manufacturing (MFG), Education and Health Services (EDH), and Leisure and Hospitality Services (LHS)—exhibited statistically significant spatial autocorrelation from 2016 to 2019. Other Services (OSV) showed statistically significant clustering every year except 2019. Additionally, the size and location of clusters varied over the study period, suggesting some degree of spatial and temporal fluidity in specialization patterns. The findings highlight that disaster events may contribute to temporary or lasting shifts in regional specialization depending on the nature of the supersector, offering a foundation for future research on economic resilience and recovery.

Rights

© 2025, Gwyneth King Waddington

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