Geospatial Analysis of Healthcare Accessibility in High Older-Adult Areas under Flood Scenarios: Implications for Disaster Management in an Aging Puerto Rican Population

Abstract

Flooding poses a latent challenge to transportation networks in Puerto Rico with critical implications for older-adult populations who depend on localized access to healthcare services. The study analyzes healthcare accessibility under flooded road network scenarios, focusing on census tracts with high concentrations of older adults aged 60 and older. A geospatial network-based analysis was conducted in ArcGIS Pro to study distance-based access to healthcare facilities using a one percent annual flood chance scenario. Accessibility was measured by a one-kilometer network distance threshold to model local access during floods. Census tract origins were based on population-weighted centroids using census tract populations. Older-adult population variables were included as demographic indicators. Analyses were executed for hospitals and Centro 330 facilities separately and combined for accessibility analyses. Results show that spatial patterns of affected access impacting older-adult census tracts feature the sensitivity of healthcare accessibility to disruptions to transportation networks, providing information for evidence-based decision making in disaster planning. Keywords ⎯ Disaster Planning, Flooded Transportation Network, Healthcare Accessibility, Older-Adult Populations.