Recurring extreme events of nature challenge disaster-prone settlements in complex ways. Devastating property damages are one of the tests of survival for such settlements in both economic and social terms. It also provides unique opportunities to rethink the environment cleared by massive natural disasters. However, rebuilding for long-term resiliency is one of the least investigated areas, particularly when employing tacit knowledge in the sustainable recovery process. This study examines the post-disaster rebuilding process in spatial terms for Bolivar Peninsula in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. It further investigates the nexus between connectivity among open space networks to various levels of surge damage among Bolivar spontaneous settlements. The study uses syntactical methods to measure axial connectivity of the Bolivar Peninsula access grid and one-way Analysis of Variance to interpret the way connectivity varies along the no damage to destroyed damage scale. In addition, the permeability rubric analyzes the elevation characteristics of houses that demonstrated higher probabilities of survival through a logistic regression. The conclusions are based on two basic premises. Local knowledge demands an indefinite time to be adapted and mobilized because of the increasing intensity of natural disasters. In addition, the high frequency of disaster events significantly challenges the versatility of local coping and survival strategies. The results reveal that the connectivity of the access grid has an inversely proportional relationship with various damage levels, particularly for no damage and destroyed. Furthermore, out of a number of resiliency characteristics listed in the literature, only ground elevation and ground enclosure demonstrated probability significances for survival. Potentially, the results of this research could support three significant outcomes pertaining to sustainable disaster recovery: preserving place character, social justice among affected groups, and promoting rapid recovery.

Annually, tropical cyclones do tremendous damage and are agents of long-term coastal change. To test this idea of different tropical cyclones delivering consistent coastal change, a landform with such evolution is needed. One such landform is a spit. What contributions do tropical cyclones give toward the evolution of a spit, and do tropical cyclones give the same kinds of impacts? To determine if tropical cyclones have similar impacts, shoreline and volumetric change from four storms impacting Bolivar Peninsula are considered. Being a southwest-trended spit at a length of 33.5 kilometers, storm impacts are measured in the form of one dimensional shoreline and two dimensional volumetric change. These impacts are abstracted into shoreline change and volumetric change patterns. These patterns are identified and compared for differences between each storm and similarity among all storms. Results indicate that shoreline accretionary zones vary alongshore. Results from Hurricane Ike indicate an accretionary zone ten kilometers from the distal end. Shoreline change patterns for Hurricane Rita show an unstable accretionary zone at four kilometers from the distal end. Results for Tropical Storm Fay indicate an unstable accretionary zone that begins at the distal end and continues to the middle of the spit. In terms of similarity for shoreline change, all patterns from storms demonstrated erosion near Rollover Fish Pass. One dimensional volumetric change patterns were entirely erosive for Hurricanes Rita and Ike, and Tropical Storm Fay had by small zones of accretion near the distal portion of the spit. Tropical Storm Josephine demonstrated an accretion zone between the middle and distal portion of the spit. Results from two dimensional volumetric change patterns suggest a threshold for inland penetration. Tropical Storm Fay showed a ten to twenty meter wide pattern of erosion around five kilometers from the distal end and near the proximal end of the spit, and Hurricane Rita demonstrated a twenty meter wide pattern of erosion near the distal end. Hurricane Ike had erosive penetration of up to 200 meters around fifteen kilometers from the distal end. Results suggest that certain storms reinforce the standard spit growth model, and others work against it.