FEBRUARY 15, 2024 — The U.S. Census Bureau is scheduled to hold a webinar on Feb. 22 at 11:30 a.m. ET to show attendees how to use the new “My Community Explorer (MCE) for Puerto Rico 1.0” tool. The tool displays natural disaster layers, such as hurricanes, and shows the impact of significant disasters on at-risk communities and underserved neighborhoods. The MCE for Puerto Rico was launched in Dec. 2023 as part of the Census Bureau’s ongoing commitment to provide timely, actionable data for Puerto Rico. MCE for the mainland was launched in 2022 and is now on version 3.1.

The interactive map-based MCE dashboards make use of Community Resilience Estimates (CRE). CRE for the mainland and CRE for Puerto Rico use a set of attributable risk factors to determine if a person is more or less likely to have a poor outcome to a stress or shock such as a natural disaster. One of the key components of the tool is that it shows natural disasters in real time and overlays the disaster on top of census tracts. This allows the user to see the relationship of the disaster to the at-risk population where the disaster is happening. Municipios and census tracts are rated as Hight Risk, Medium Risk, or Low Risk of having a poor outcome to a stress or shock.  

The MCEs also highlight demographic and socioeconomic data that measure inequality and can help inform data-based solutions. The tools are designed to help users identify underserved communities in alignment with the Census Bureau’s Data Equity initiatives as directed by the President's Executive Order 13985 on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government

Webinar: My Community Explorer for Puerto Rico: Using Community Resilience Estimates (CRE) to Help Identify Underserved Communities

Feb. 22, 2024, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ET

George “Chip” Walker, Office of the Deputy Director, Special Assistant Emergency Management, Equity, and Economics, U.S. Census Bureau

Javier Gomez, survey statistician, Small Areas Estimates Branch, Social Economic and Housing Statistics Division, U.S. Census Bureau

To attend, please RSVP here.

https://www.census.gov/data/academy/webinars/2024/puerto-rico/cre-underserved-communities.html

For comprehensive Census Bureau statistics on Puerto Rico, visit census.gov/puerto-rico. This page includes datasets and resources covering a wide array of topics for Puerto Rico such as population, demographics, income and employment, housing, businesses, and the economy.

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