Natural Hazards Observer
| November 2006 | Volume XXXI | Number 2 |
Below are descriptions of recently awarded contracts and grants related to hazards and disasters. An inventory of awards from 1995 to the present is available at www.colorado.edu/hazards/resources/grants/.
Disaster, Resilience and the Built Environment on the Gulf Coast. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation, two years, $749,420. Principal Investigator(s): John Logan (Phil Brown, Steven Hamburg, John Mustard, and Rachel Morello-Frosch), Brown University, Department of Sociology; (401) 863-2267; john_logan@brown.edu. This project will study the resilience of the built environment in coastal communities subject to chronic wind and water damage from hurricanes. A Hurricane Katrina case study will look at which communities were most affected, which will be rebuilt and how they will be different from before, and which segments of the population will be permanently displaced. The case study will be embedded within a larger project on the relationship between hurricane damage, natural environment, and the built environment.
Improvisation in Emergency Response: Linking Cognition, Behavior and Social Interaction. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation, three years, $710,000. Principal Investigator(s): David Mendonça (Carter Butts and Gary Webb), New Jersey Institute of Technology, Information Systems Department; (973) 596-5212; mendonca@njit.edu. Key goals of this project are to explain the cognitive, behavioral, and social dynamics of improvisation in emergency response; present and make publicly available the data and tools produced by the project; and develop and evaluate tools, techniques, and other materials to support training and policy making pertaining to improvised response to disaster. In accomplishing these goals, this project will develop, implement, and evaluate a multilevel, multidisciplinary model of improvisation during emergency response.
Shared Governance of Risk. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation, three years, $738,578. Principal Investigators: William Wallace, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems; (518) 276-6854; wallaw@rpi.edu and Peter May (Bryan Jones), University of Washington, Department of Political Science; (206) 543-9842; pmay@u.washington.edu. This research will systematically address federal influences on state risk priorities, state risk priorities, federal and state organizational response repertoires, and the organizational dynamics of response to discordant information. A new understanding of organizational choice will be developed that integrates the policy process attention-driven model used to study policy agenda-setting with systems modeling of organizational capabilities and responses for extreme events. The findings will help guide development of more flexible and more responsive intergovernmental approaches to risk management.
Contending with Materiel Convergence: Optimal Control, Coordination, and Delivery of Critical Supplies to the Site of Extreme Events. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation, two years, $749,298. Principal Investigator(s): José Holguín-Veras (Havidán Rodríguez, Didier Valdes, Tricia Wachtendorf, and Satish Ukkusuri), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; (518) 276-6221; jhv@rpi.edu. The goal of this project is to develop methodologies and tools to accelerate convergence between the dynamic needs and supplies of critical resources at the site of an extreme event. The researchers seek to develop ways to forecast needs; estimate what is available; estimate the dynamic pattern of unmet needs; establish an optimal strategy of priority allocation; design the most effective ways to deliver, store, and distribute supplies; identify institutional impediments and mechanisms to overcome them; and identify ways to tighten integration of the information technology systems.
A Multidisciplinary Protocol for Assessing Climate Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation, 18 months, $124,736. Principal Investigator(s): Julie Winkler (Jeffrey Andresen, Pang-Ning Tan, Suzanne Thornsbury, and John Black), Michigan State University, Department of Geography; (517) 353-9186; winkler@msu.edu. This exploratory project will use a modest-sized, international industry as a prototype to develop approaches for improving the assessment of climate impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation. Researchers hope to provide a better understanding of local and global vulnerabilities of an industry, the impact of emerging and declining production regions on regional economic development, international product and market differentiation as possible adaptation strategies, and the role of credit and insurance in managing risk. The ultimate goal is to understand the relative importance of climate as one agent of change among others such as political and economic risk.
Evaluating the Effects of Dams on Social Dynamics. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation, one year, $124,792. Principal Investigator(s): Desiree Tullos (Aaron Wolf and Bryan Tilt), Oregon State University, Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering; (541) 737-2038; tullosd@engr.orst.edu. This research project will investigate the social dynamics of dam construction, or removal. Researchers will evaluate the role of dams as agents of change on the ecological, economic, and sociocultural determinants of a community. The larger objectives of this research are to study the effect of dams in the Yunnan province of China, where dam construction is driving rapid ecological, economic, and social change.
Power System Security Assessment, Monitoring and Control in Emergency Conditions Due to Hurricanes such as Katrina. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation, one year, $50,000. Principal Investigator: Hsiao-Dong Chiang, Cornell University, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; (607) 255-5270; chiang@ece.cornell.edu. This project involves developing a framework for power system security assessment, monitoring, and control in hurricane situations. The framework will include a damage prediction subsystem, a subsystem for avoiding system collapse and cascading outages, and a subsystem for emergency control development.
Family Business Response to Federal Disaster Assistance. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation, two years, $272,587. Principal Investigator(s): Sharon Danes (Kathryn Stafford and George Haynes), University of Minnesota, Department of Family Social Science; (612) 625-9273; sdanes@che.umn.edu. This research will examine how disasters impact family businesses and how family businesses recover from disasters. Anticipated outcomes will be useful to those seeking to promote business continuity planning for small and family businesses.
The Cultural Cognition of Risk: Psychological and Social Mechanisms. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation, one year, $282,975. Principal Investigator(s): Dan Kahan (Paul Slovic, John Gastil, and Geoffrey Cohen), Yale Law School; (203) 432-8832; dan.kahan@yale.edu. The “cultural cognition of risk” refers to the tendency to conform beliefs about risks to culturally grounded appraisals of dangerous activities. The objective of this study is to identify why and how cultural commitments shape risk perception. Researchers hypothesize that individuals emotionally resist information that signifies interference with activities central to their cultural identities and that they give greatest credibility to risk communicators who appear to share their cultural orientations.
Creating an Archive of Preparedness and Homeland Security Survey Data. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation/U.S. Department of Homeland Security, two years, $177,808. Principal Investigator: Gary LaFree, University of Maryland, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice; (301) 405-6600; glafree@msn.com. A diverse history of research exists in terrorism, preparedness, and recovery, but it is not easily accessible and searchable. This project will create an archive of survey data related to homeland security and preparedness. Specifically, it will serve as a clearinghouse for academics as well as homeland security officials interested in better understanding individual beliefs about terrorism, security, and preparedness; expand the nature and types of hypotheses related to homeland security and preparedness that can be examined; and facilitate the generation of future surveys, especially rapid-response survey tools.
Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: Tracking PSID Families in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation/U.S. Department of Homeland Security, one year, $174,999. Principal Investigator(s): Frank Stafford (Robert Schoeni and Katherine McGonagle), University of Michigan, Department of Economics; (734) 936-0323; fstaffor@isr.umich.edu. The goal of this project is to track and locate families who are part of the longitudinal sample of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to enhance the likelihood of their participation in the 2007 wave of the PSID. Additionally, these families will be surveyed to assess exposures to Hurricane Katrina, its impact on a number of socioeconomic and mental health outcomes, and the role played by pre-Katrina socioeconomic circumstances in shaping post-Katrina experiences.
Time-Sharing Experiments on Disaster Risk Communication and Preparedness. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation/U.S. Department of Homeland Security, one year, $186,100. Principal Investigator(s): Diana Mutz (Matthew Davis), University of Pennsylvania, Political Science Department; (215) 898-6498; mutz@sas.upenn.edu. Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) was organized to encourage the collective enterprise of producing policy-relevant scientific research. For this project, TESS will stimulate research on risk communication and its effects on disaster preparedness; government and individual attributions of responsibility and perceived responsiveness; and intergroup threat and cooperation.
General Social Survey Module on Citizen Preparedness for Terrorist Acts in the United States. Funding Organization: National Science Foundation/U.S. Department of Homeland Security, one year, $199,999. Principal Investigator: Tom Smith, National Opinion Research Center; (773) 256-6000; smitht@norc.uchicago.edu. This project will add a module on public terrorism preparedness to the General Social Survey, a regular, ongoing interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center. The module, developed by a multidisciplinary team, will provide measures of citizen terrorism preparedness and allow for validation and expansion of the fundamental social scientific theory that addresses the root causes for citizen preparedness actions/inactions. This information will enable policy makers to craft and implement the most effective public education campaigns to increase national levels of citizen readiness for future disasters or acts of terrorism.
Ecological Approaches to Understanding Post-Disaster Distress. Funding Organization: National Institute of Mental Health, three years, $629,564. Principal Investigator: Sandro Galea, University of Michigan, School of Public Health; (734) 763-9784; sgalea@umich.edu. The purpose of this study is to assess the role that contextual factors (e.g., community-level health and social resources/community socioeconomic status) play in shaping mental health and recovery after a disaster. It aims to demonstrate the utility of an ecological conceptualization of disaster recovery, focusing on individuals’ health outcomes, such as the occurrence/severity of posttraumatic stress disorder, depressive symptoms, and chronic stress.
Social and Economic Effects of a Natural Disaster. Funding Organization: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, two years, $170,009. Principal Investigator: Elizabeth A. Frankenberg, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Sociology; elizabeth_frankenberg@rand.org. Focusing on Indonesia and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, this project will document the immediate and intermediate consequences for mortality, family disruption and relocation, physical and mental health, and economic resources; trace the reconstruction of lives and livelihoods; and identify characteristics associated with mitigating the consequences of the disaster. It seeks to produce scientifically sound data for understanding the impact of a major natural disaster on the health and well-being of a population and for designing effective relief efforts for this crisis and for future natural disasters.