Tornado Epidemiology

Research carried out recently in OU-CIMMS’ Behavioural Insights Unit (BIU) in an attempt to draw together the wide-ranging literature related to tornado epidemiology. The literature drew from Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports, grant reports and NOAA Service Assessments alongside academic journal articles for the first time.

A key finding is that complexity exhibited by vectors of vulnerability is key to understanding drivers of risk, and how these impact on survivability. There is not one simple solution to reducing risk of fatality because there are multiple vulnerabilities which when coupled with the magnitude of the hazard (provided by the EF scale) all underpin varying degrees of risk that likely impact on survivability of tornadoes.

Full Report can be found here, while a seven minute read Blog article highlights the main themes found in the literature that might be useful for future research.