Major disasters such as extreme weather events can magnify and exacerbate pre-existing social disparities, with disadvantaged populations bearing disproportionate costs. Despite the implications for equity and emergency planning, we lack a quantitative understanding of how these social fault lines translate to different behaviours in large-scale emergency contexts. Here we investigate this problem in the context of Hurricane Harvey, using over 30 million anonymized GPS records from over 150,000 opted-in users in the Greater Houston Area to quantify patterns of disaster-inflicted relocation activities before, during, and after the shock. We show that evacuation distance is highly homogenous across individuals from different types of neighbourhoods classified by race and wealth, obeying a truncated power-law distribution. Yet here the similarities end: we find that both race and wealth strongly impact evacuation patterns, with disadvantaged minority populations less likely to evacuate than wealthier white residents. Finally, there are considerable discrepancies in terms of departure and return times by race and wealth, with strong social cohesion among evacuees from advantaged neighbourhoods in their destination choices. These empirical findings bring new insights into mobility and evacuations, providing policy recommendations for residents, decision-makers, and disaster managers alike.

极端天气事件等重大灾害会放大和加剧先前存在的社会差距，弱势群体承担不成比例的成本。尽管对公平和应急计划有影响，但我们缺乏对这些社会断层线如何在大规模应急情况下转化为不同行为的定量理解。在这里，我们在飓风哈维的背景下调查了这个问题，使用来自大休斯顿地区超过 150,000 名选择加入的用户的超过 3000 万条匿名 GPS 记录来量化冲击之前、期间和之后受灾搬迁活动的模式。我们表明，来自按种族和财富分类的不同类型社区的个人之间的疏散距离是高度同质的，服从截断的幂律分布。然而，相似之处到此结束：我们发现种族和财富都对疏散模式产生了强烈影响，与较富裕的白人居民相比，弱势少数群体不太可能疏散。最后，不同种族和财富的出发和返回时间存在相当大的差异，来自优势社区的撤离者在目的地选择上具有很强的社会凝聚力。这些实证研究结果为流动性和疏散带来了新的见解，为居民、决策者和灾害管理人员等提供了政策建议。来自优势社区的撤离者在目的地选择上具有很强的社会凝聚力。这些实证研究结果为流动性和疏散带来了新的见解，为居民、决策者和灾害管理人员等提供了政策建议。来自优势社区的撤离者在目的地选择上具有很强的社会凝聚力。这些实证研究结果为流动性和疏散带来了新的见解，为居民、决策者和灾害管理人员等提供了政策建议。