Mark Kear
University of Arizona, AZ·Social Science
After a hurricane, some neighborhoods rebuild quickly while others stay damaged for years. One possible reason is insurance: when insurers deny homeowners' claims, some residents take them to court and others do not.
- Fields
Social Science
Earth & Environmental Science
Computer Science
- Topics
disaster recovery
hurricanes
insurance litigation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Interview residents affected by recent hurricanes to learn why some consider suing their insurer after a denied claim and others do not, revealing how communities differ in their willingness to litigate.
- Build a property-by-property dataset that links property records, court records and satellite images, using deep-learning algorithms to detect damaged homes and track rebuilding over time.
- Use multilevel hazard models, which estimate how long it takes for an event to occur, to test whether a property's time to recovery depends on the owner's involvement in insurance litigation and its outcome.
- Identify the demographic and economic factors linked to higher insurance litigation rates and to different legal outcomes across hurricane-affected communities.
More about the research
This project asks whether differences in insurance lawsuits from place to place help explain why communities recover at different speeds.
Why it matters
Homeowners in hurricane-prone regions often struggle to rebuild when insurance claims are denied. This work could show regional planners which communities fall behind in recovery and whether access to legal action plays a part. That knowledge could help planners and policymakers target support to the residents and neighborhoods most likely to be left behind after future disasters.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mark Schuller
Northern Illinois University, IL·Social Science
Test whether disaster resilience models developed in one community can be adapted to others across different scales. Compare outcomes at multiple sites.
Maria Watson
University of Florida, FL·Social Science
Track how farms recover from severe windstorms over time, using repeated field visits to affected agricultural communities and surveys of farmers whose operations were damaged.
Janet Box-Steffensmeier
Ohio State University, OH·Social Science
Build the first comprehensive dataset cataloging the geographic origin, timing and issue areas of all writ of certiorari petitions asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court cases.
The school
University of Arizona: 36 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 487 research doctorates a year.
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