VRAP Dashboard - University of Houston
Skip to main content

Hobby School of Public Affairs

VRAP Dashboard

Shaping a Resilient Future

An interactive tool highlighting Houston's communities and vulnerability to natural hazards for actionable insights.

Welcome to the Hobby School of Public Affairs

Houston VRAP dashboard!

(Beta testing version)


Data-informed Decisions 

The Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston has developed an online data dashboard for local leaders, policymakers, researchers, students and others to better understand Houston's communities. One of the primary goals of this interactive tool is to identify underserved areas within the interrelated concepts of vulnerability, resilience, adaptability and preparedness, also known as VRAP, and highlight population disparities based on demographics.

What makes the dashboard unique? It focuses on critical issues facing Houstonians and underscores hard-to-reach communities in a landscape where we need good data visualization to make complex concepts easy to understand. This open-source tool gathers and combines some of Houston's most relevant publicly available data sources to help characterize communities and inform policy decisions and resource allocation.

The dashboard will be updated regularly through ongoing data collection and the inclusion of original survey findings from the Hobby School.


 

 screenshot1.png

 

Feel empowered using our tool 

Be the first to know about an upcoming webinar in the spring of 2024, where Hobby School researchers will take you through the basics of navigating the dashboard and its features.

 

 

 

FAQs

How can I learn more about the dashboard and its capabilities?
Review our Methods document or contact Maria P Perez, Research Associate, at mppereza@uh.edu 

How can I ask specific questions or become a sponsor?
Please get in touch with Maria P Perez at mppereza@uh.edu

What are examples of searches?
Everyone can be a data person. For example, users can search for Medically Underserved Areas that are in vulnerable neighborhoods, or for census tracts that have no access to internet and that have low education attainment in Houston. 

How can I cite or reference the dashboard?
To cite the dashboard, use the following format:  Perez Argüelles, M. P., Buttorff, G. J., Pinto, P. M., Sipole, S. L., Vallejo, A. & Wong, M. C. (2023). Identifying Local Measures of Social Vulnerability in Houston [White paper]. Center for Public Policy, Hobby School of Public Affairs. [link coming soon!]