Pei Pei
Otterbein University
Title
Understanding factors influencing FEMA aid eligibility via GLMs: A case study from the 2024 Ohio tornado response
Abstract
This talk examines post-disaster grants distributed to households by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) following the 2024 Ohio tornadoes. These grants provide essential support for housing, repairs, and other disaster-related needs, particularly for underinsured individuals. Accurately predicting eligibility is critical to ensuring that aid is allocated in a timely and equitable manner. An interpretable classification model was developed using a generalized linear model to help FEMA decision- makers predict aid eligibility based on household and community-level factors. The analysis also investigates whether socioeconomic and demographic characteristics are associated with aid eligibility, offering insights that can support more transparent and data-informed disaster response policies. The model achieves a high classification performance with an area under the curve of 0.96 on both training and testing data.
Zoom Link: https://osu.zoom.us/j/94954552323?pwd=FiuCCq0ZYPRkmeLQXhnm0A8H4ztH63.1
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