Damage Assessment

This week I was tasked with conducting a damage assessment to an area in New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy hit. Below is the result of my analysis. The points are symbolized with a color ramp, with Green representing No Damage and red representing Destroyed. 

    The assignment called for an analysis of the number of points within 100, 200, and 300 meters of the coastline. In order to conduct this analysis, I first created a coastline feature. After setting up the coastline feature, I then created three buffers for 100, 200, and 300 meters, all on the right side of the line. From there I simply manually counted how many of each category fell into the buffer layers. I did use the “Select layer by attribute” tool to help highlight the different categories.

    I found that every building within 100 meters of the coastline was destroyed or received major damage. The parcels that were unaffected were parking lots and did not have structures. This was the area with the most destruction. From 100- 200 m the majority of structures had minor damage or were affected, but there was still a good bit of destroyed and majorly damaged structures. The 200- 300m zone only had a handful of majorly damaged structures and none were destroyed. The majority of buildings were unaffected or affected. A table is included below. 

Structure Damage Category	Count of Structures 0-100 m from coastline	Count of Structures 100-200 m from coastline	Count of Structures 200-300 m from coastline
No Damage	4	2	23
Affected	0	12	11
Minor Damage	0	10	4
Major Damage	2	9	5
Destroyed	6	6	0
Totals	12	39	43