  This study presents a granular analysis of societal recovery from disasters
at the individual level, focusing on the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and
Hurricane Ida. Societal recovery is defined as the restoration of the societal
functioning of the affected community to its normal/steady-state level. It
evaluates the recovery of impacted residents based on fluctuations in their
lifestyle patterns in visits to points of interest. The analysis focuses on:
(1) the extent of heterogeneity in lifestyle recovery of residents in the same
spatial area; and (2) the extent to which variations in lifestyle recovery and
its heterogeneity among users can be explained based on hazard impact extent
and social vulnerability. As lifestyle recovery progresses, heterogeneity
diminishes, indicating that lower lifestyle recovery rates correlate with
higher heterogeneity within a spatial area. This relationship between lifestyle
recovery and heterogeneity can lead to the misestimation of recovery timelines,
potentially resulting in the inefficient allocation of resources and
disproportionate attention to already recovering communities. Key contributions
of the study are fourfold: First, it characterizes societal recovery at the
finest scale by examining fluctuations in individual lifestyles, revealing
heterogeneity even among neighbors. Second, it proposes using individual
lifestyle as an indicator of societal functioning to measure, more human
centrically, disaster impacts and recovery speeds. Third, it introduces a
method for quantifying lifestyle recovery that enables near-real-time
monitoring, departing from traditional survey-based methods. Fourth, it
provides empirical insights into the relationship between disaster impacts and
societal recovery, showing that the severity of disaster impacts and resident
income levels and percentage of minority populations influence recovery
durations.
