Access disparities to evacuation centers in the Philippines

Abstract

Robust disaster risk reduction and management systems are crucial in the Philippines. Evacuation centers are focal facilities, serving as immediate temporary shelters for the affected population. In this work, we consider possible disparities that would arise as we limit an evacuation center's service area according to local political boundaries. We utilized Dirichlet tessellation in determining the area that each evacuation center services and estimated the number of people within its service area. We also evaluated municipalities which have no ECs in the dataset by estimating the areas and population with no EC services. We found that when imposing national boundaries, 57% of evacuation centers have service areas greater than 5 km² while 60% are servicing an estimated population greater than 2000. Around 44% of evacuation centers in the country are servicing an area and a population above these two baselines. Since we are working with an incomplete dataset, we are to conclude that 15 million people are not serviced by an EC if we base solely on geotagged ECs. Hence, the dataset does not reflect conditions on the ground in some places. Our results showed disparities in access to ECs as the population within a service area varies given the level of jurisdictions we imposed.