Linking Changes in Social Vulnerability and Urban Development in A Flood-Prone Region: A Block-Group-Level Analysis of Harris County, Texas

This dataset supports a longitudinal study of social vulnerability, land use/land cover (LULC) change, and flood hazard exposure in Harris County, Texas, analyzed at the census block group level across three time periods (2000, 2010, and 2020). The dataset includes census block group shapefiles with Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) scores derived from principal component analysis (PCA), NLCD-based land cover rasters clipped to Harris County, FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) boundaries, summary CSV files for SoVI scores, LULC change statistics, and flood exposure estimates, and Python scripts for SoVI construction, areal interpolation, LULC classification, and statistical analysis. Temporal harmonization across census geographies was performed using proportional area-weighted areal interpolation. Spatial analysis methods include Global and Local Moran's I, Getis-Ord Gi* hotspot analysis, and bivariate LISA cluster mapping. All analyses focus on spatial co-occurrence of social vulnerability and urban development within flood-prone areas. This dataset accompanies the manuscript "Linking Changes in Social Vulnerability and Urban Development in a Flood-Prone Region: A Block-Group-Level Analysis of Harris County, Texas," submitted to Risk Analysis (Wiley).