Stephen Michael Strader

Villanova University | Nova · Department of Geography and the Environment

This study examines how tornado risk and societal exposure interact to create tornado disaster potential in the United States. Finescale historical and projected demographic data are used in a set of region-specific Monte Carlo tornado simulations to reveal how societal development has shaped, and will continue to shape, tornado disaster frequency...

Determining the likelihood and severity of tornado disasters requires an understanding of the dynamic relationship between tornado risk and vulnerability. As population increases in the future, it is likely that tornado disaster frequency and magnitude will amplify. This study presents the Tornado Impact Monte Carlo (TorMC) model, which simulates t...

W eather hazards such as tornadoes and hurricanes affect thousands of people annually, often resulting in casualties and billions of dollars in damage. These extreme weather events can lead to disasters , which are a product of both hazard risk and societal exposure. Hazard risk describes the frequency and magnitude of a weather hazard, while socie...

This research examines tornadoes and their fatalities by light condition (i.e., daytime and nighttime) for the United States. The study has two primary objectives: 1) catalog and reassess differences in daytime and nighttime, or nocturnal, tornadoes and their fatalities from spatial and temporal perspectives; 2) employ a spatially explicit Monte Ca...

This study investigates the interrelationships between National Weather Service (NWS) county warning area (CWA) tornado risk, exposure, and societal vulnerability. CWA climatological tornado risk is determined using historical tornado event data, while exposure and vulnerability are assessed by employing present-day population, housing, socioeconom...

Structural damage from Hurricane Delta was minimal based on public reports and direct observations by the FAST members. As peak wind gusts from Delta were well below design levels, this outcome was not unexpected. Roof cover damage was commonly observed across Delta’s wind field, although preliminary observations by FAST did not indicate a well-def...

Severe convective storms along the Front Range and eastern Plains of Colorado frequently produce tornadoes and hail, leading to substantial damage and crop losses annually. Determination of future human exposure from these events must consider both changes in meteorology and population dynamics. Projections of EF0+ tornadoes and severe (1.0 in+, 25...

Southeastern United States mobile and manufactured housing (MH) residents are the most tornado vulnerable subset of the population due to both physical and socioeconomic factors. This study builds upon prior MH resident tornado vulnerability research by statistically and geographically analyzing responses from a survey administered to these residen...

Tornado mortality is greatest in the Southeast United States (U.S.) due to an elevated tornado risk, a larger total developed land area, and a greater number of mobile and manufactured homes. The National Weather Service (NWS) and Federal Management Agency (FEMA) both recommend that mobile home residents evacuate to a nearby sturdier structure when...

Research has illustrated that tornado disaster potential and impact severity are controlled by hazard risk and underlying physical and social vulnerabilities. Previous vulnerability studies have suggested that an important driver of disaster consequence is the type of housing affected by tornadic winds. This study employs a Monte Carlo tornado simu...

This study utilizes fine-scale, built-environment data in conjunction with past wildfire events to assess historical spatiotemporal changes in wildfire likelihood and societal exposure to wildfires for the conterminous USA. Results indicate that conterminous US wildfire exposure has increased substantially over the past 70 years due to escalating w...

While risk and associated hazard characteristics are important components of disaster formation, the consequences of hazards are often driven by underlying human and built-environment vulnerabilities. Yet, there has been little research conducted on how the evolving contributors of risk and vulnerability commingle to produce disaster potential. In...

Tornado disasters and their potential are a product of both hazard risk and underlying physical and social vulnerabilities. This investigation appraises exposure, which is an important component and driver of vulnerability, and its interrelationship with tornado risk in the United States since the mid-twentieth century. The research demonstrates ho...

The classic mental picture of a tornado dancing across a rural landscape—derived, in part, from the memorable sepia scenes in the The Wizard of Oz—is being replaced incrementally by the horrific views of tornadoes devastating communities as the hazard increasingly interacts with amplifying population and development.

This investigation frames volcano disaster potentialities for the US Pacific Northwest by assessing the interaction of the region’s growing population and affiliated housing development with volcanic hazards. Changes in human and residential exposure to the hazards are measured for a period of 1940 through 2100 by employing fine-scale (100 m) histo...

An increasing number of significant and violent tornado events in the United States have been documented and mapped at extremely high resolution by government, research and private entities using remotely sensed and post-event damage surveys; however, these assessments often generate inconsistent spatial measures of tornado strength, even for the s...

Visibility-related weather hazards have significant impacts on motor vehicle operators due to decreased driver vision, reduced roadway speed, amplified speed variability, and elevated crash risk. This research presents a national analysis of fog-, smoke-, and dust storm-associated vehicular fatalities in the U.S. Initially, a database of weather-re...

This study integrates past research methodologies, data from the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN), and geographic information system techniques to assess the lightning and severe weather hazard relationship for the 27–28 April 2011 United States tornado outbreak. NLDN and Doppler radar data are used to examine the cloud-to-ground (CG) li...

Exposure has amplified rapidly over the past half century and is one of the primary drivers of increases in disaster frequency and consequences. Previous research on exposure change detection has proven limited since the geographic units of aggregation for decennial censuses, the sole measure of accurate historical population and housing counts, va...