  This study aims to quantify community resilience based on fluctuations in the
visits to various Point-of-Interest (POIs) locations. Visit to POIs is an
essential indicator of human activities and captures the combined effects of
perturbations in people lifestyles, built environment conditions, and
businesses status. The study utilized digital trace data of unique visits to
POIs in the context of the 2017 Hurricane Harvey in Houston (Texas, USA) to
examine spatial patterns of impact and total recovery effort and utilized these
measures to quantify community resilience. The results showed that certain POI
categories such as building materials and supplies dealers and grocery stores
were the most resilient elements of the community compared to the other POI
categories. On the other hand, categories such as medical facilities and
entertainment were found to have lower resilience values. This result suggests
that these categories were either not essential for community recovery or that
the community was not able to access these services at normal levels
immediately after the hurricane. In addition, the spatial analyses revealed
that many areas in the community with lower levels of resilience experienced
extensive flooding. However, some areas with low resilience were not flooded
extensively, suggesting that spatial reach of the impacts goes beyond flooded
areas. The results demonstrate the importance of the approach proposed in our
study. While this study focused on Houston and only analysed one natural
hazard, the approach can be applied to other communities and disaster contexts.
Applying this approach, emergency managers and public officials can efficiently
monitor the patterns of disaster impacts and recovery across different spatial
areas and POI categories and also identify POI categories and areas of their
community that need to be prioritized for resource allocation.
