Poster Session Abstracts

Over the past decade, the United States has been one of the top five countries in the world most frequently struck by natural disasters. Aggregate property damages have risen exponentially alongside increases in the population and new residential housing development projects. In order to facilitate post-disaster reconstruction of physical infrastructure, the American construction industry must have the capacity to respond to sudden post-disaster increases in demand for construction services, by providing an adequate supply of material and labor resources to communities devastated by natural disasters. 

Construction capacity, defined for the first time here as the maximum building volume a local construction industry can supply due to regional supply chain availability of material and labor, determines how quickly physical infrastructure can be rebuilt in a post-disaster community. Although the construction industry plays a critical role in repairing and replacing residential homes destroyed by natural disasters, there remains a lack of pre-disaster planning and coordination between local governments, homeowners, and their local construction industry. Pre-disaster construction capacity is a key determinant of how quickly residential homes can be rebuilt following a disaster, but is limited by the availability of local construction industry resources. Supply chains, defined as an integrated series of processes and businesses working together to provide a forward flow of materials, labor, or services, facilitate resource sharing within local construction industries. To understand the effect construction capacity has on post-disaster rebuilding of residential homes, this research aims to quantify the capabilities of regional construction supply chains.

ARISE is a group of private sector organizations coordinating with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) to effect private sector action for disaster risk reduction. The overall goal of ARISE is to create risk-resilient societies by energizing the private sector in collaboration with the public sector and other stakeholders to deliver on the targets of the Sendai Framework.

With an initial membership of over 140 private sector entities and affiliates, ARISE aims to expand the number of private sector organizations and others involved in supporting the implementation of the Sendai Framework and allow the private sector to implement tangible projects and initiatives that deliver results critical to the achievement of the outcome and goal of the Sendai Framework.

ARISE facilitates exchange of experience and knowledge on how to implement tangible disaster risk reduction projects through seven work-streams: disaster risk management strategies, investment metrics, benchmarking and standards, education and training, legal and regulatory, urban risk reduction and resilience, and insurance.

In this poster, we present a collaborative approach between researchers and practitioners that seeks to infuse social science research findings into programs that are working to reduce wildfire risk.

The WiRē team has a proven history with implementation of a tiered wildfire risk assessment approach to inform wildfire education programs. This systematic collection of parcel level wildfire risk and social data for an entire community sets the approach apart from other models of wildfire risk assessment. The rapid assessment serves as an indicator of relative risk of parcels within a community rather than an absolute measure of risk. Following the rapid assessment, household social surveys are administered and paired with rapid assessment data. The paired assessment/social survey data provide important community specific insights into gaps in risk perceptions, how residents will respond to incentives (e.g. cost share programs) to mitigate risk, the relative influence of different wildfire risk information sources, and the effects of neighbors on mitigation actions. The data provide specific information to wildfire education programs to develop and facilitate adaptation in a manner specific to the unique characteristics of the community and make the best use of scarce program funds. The approach also serves as a baseline to monitor changes in the biophysical and social measures over time.  One underlying philosophy of the approach is that wildfire practitioners will develop better programs if they participate in the data collection process and share the results with their communities.

Most flood damages in rivers are mainly occurring in medium and small streams as their restoration ratio is relatively low. Therefore, small stream restoration projects are the most effective tool for flood risk reduction. But if we overemphasize, strengthen and increase the safety and efficiency of small stream restoration, restorations may isolate the small streams from the residents and an ecosystem. Recently developed policies such as artistic and safe small stream restoration programs can help to make the small streams a regional specialty by eco-friendly or special products and local culture, which also can support sustainable development of local communities. To lead the small stream restoration into this good direction, decision-making to set priority of the stream restorations is very important. It is not easy as the small stream basin has various economical, ecological, historical values and complex geological, meteorological and geographical characteristics. In this study, we determined 14 evaluation criteria and 11 attributes considering the functions and objectives of the artistic and safe small stream restoration program. The eigenvector method in Analytic Hierarch Process was used to estimate the relative importance of evaluation criterion. The results could provide a reasonable guideline for analyzing the decision-making process on investment priority setting of regional specialized small streams which may revive local economy and improve the quality of life by coexisting with the environment.

A Point of Dispensing (POD) is one method to distribute medical countermeasures to a population during a biological outbreak. The POD Traffic Impact Model (POD TIM) developed in this research examines the traffic impacts of POD operations on a transportation network. The methodology utilizes a modified and enhanced travel demand forecast model based on DelDOT’s Statewide Evacuation Model in Citilabs Cube to include the choice of POD location choice based on proximity. Five patient arrival scenarios are tested using six relevant measures of effectiveness: V/C ratio, average and maximum patient queue length, average and maximum waiting times (delay), and worst time to arrive.

A case study is developed based on Wilmington, Delaware under the assumptions of an aerosolized anthrax release, and five POD locations. The case study operates under several assumptions: all traffic is vehicular; the compliance rate is 90 percent; and the POD processing rate is 1000 people per hour. The results indicated that the PODs do not have significant impacts on the surrounding network but there are likely to be local issues related to parking and delays in processing at the PODs close to population concentrations. The exploratory analysis demonstrated that issues can be identified including the need for managing parking and sharing information about which PODs to go to and the best times to visit the POD.

Future research includes updating the POD choice algorithm, implementing a parking constraint sub-model, and readdressing the patient arrival patterns.

Keywords: Point of dispensing, traffic impact model, biological outbreak, anthrax, Citilabs Cube

Disaster recovery efforts focus on the provision of basic needs such as food and water however food insecurity after disaster is common. While there are ample efforts to meet immediate needs, how individuals experience food insecurity post disaster and the impacts of health and well-being in the disaster recovery context are still unclear. Data on 1,079 households impacted by Hurricane Katrina were collected in the Gulf Coast Child and Family Health (G-CAFH) Study. In 2010, participants reported on perceived recovery post-disaster as well as demographic characteristics, physical and mental health, and insufficient money in the household for food. Logistic regression models were fit to examine associations among food insecurity and structural, health, and social factors. Food insecurity was reported by 22.5 percent (n=166) of respondents in this sample. After adjusting for individual covariates, individuals reporting having a partner (OR 0.7, 95 percent CI: 0.42, 0.99) and high self-efficacy (OR 0.6, CI:0.37, 0.85), social support (OR 0.6, CI:0.42, 0.98), and sense of community (OR 0.7, CI:0.44, 0.98) were less likely to experience food insecurity while respondents reporting Black race (OR 1.7, CI:1.08, 2.58), age 35-49 (OR 1.9, CI:1.03, 3.51), poor physical health (OR 1.9, CI:1.22, 2.93), or disability (OR 1.8, CI:1.05, 2.97) were more likely to report food insecurity five years after Hurricane Katrina. Social factors buffer food insecurity, explaining away mental health factors. Long-term recovery efforts should focus on developing secure, sustainable food systems and improving social support networks and self-efficacy to address food insecurity and ameliorate health consequences post-disaster

A community’s ability to withstand all hazards depends on the security and resilience of the Nation’s physical and cyber infrastructure, which is increasingly challenged by: 1) population growth, which is predicted to increase by nearly 40 percent by 2050, 2) aging and deterioration, most succinctly described by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) when it assigned U.S. infrastructure an overall grade of D+ in 2013, and 3) natural and manmade hazards, including severe weather, climate change, and deliberate attacks.

Overcoming the challenges listed above will require infrastructure systems to be adapted and designed for resilience, reducing the risk and detrimental consequences from natural hazards and long-term challenges, such as climate change.

Argonne National Laboratory’s (Argonne) Resilient Infrastructure Initiative is advancing the science and technology needed to enable the resilient design of future infrastructure systems. Argonne is currently focused on three goals:

Goal 1: Build Innovative National Capabilities—Develop next-generation infrastructure models that properly consider all hazards and integrate dependencies and interdependencies among lifeline infrastructure systems.

Goal 2: Create Resilient Infrastructure User Facility—Build upon and serve as the integrator in applying science and engineering to deliver infrastructure analyses to government agencies, private sector partners, and non-governmental and research organizations.

Goal 3: Drive Development of New Materials and Technologies – Drive development of new materials and technologies through simulations and standards development.

The poster presentation will include an overview of the Resilient Infrastructure Initiative and describe the first research and development project, which integrated electric power and natural gas systems modeling to understand cascading failures.

http://www.anl.gov/egs/group/resilient-infrastructure

The Hazards & Vulnerability Research Institute (HVRI) at the University of South Carolina is an interdisciplinary research and training center focused on the development of theory, data, metrics, methods, applications, and geospatial analytical tools for understanding hazard vulnerability and resiliency science. HVRI facilitates local, state, and federal government efforts to improve emergency preparedness, planning, response, and disaster resilience through its outreach activities, including technical assistance to and translational products for practitioner communities and training emergency managers to use EM GIS. Our signature products include SHELDUS, SoVI®, and BRIC. The HVRI team consists of 17 core faculty and staff members (Geography) and 17 research affiliates from other disciplines and universities. Current HVRI projects include:

• Assisting disaster recovery efforts by tracking impacts and recovery trends across South Carolina following the October 2015 floods.

• Partnering with South Carolina Emergency Management Division and Florida’s Department of Emergency Management to build a more robust and scientific understanding of risks and vulnerabilities.

• HVRI develops and maintains a variety of web-based tools and technologies, including

• South Carolina’s Integrated Hazard Assessment Tool (SC IHAT) supporting county level hazard mitigation (http://webra.cas.sc.edu/hvri/ihat/index.html)

• Florida Public Health Risk Assessment Tool (FPHRAT) supporting state and local public health disaster preparedness and response (https://flphrat.com/)

• South Carolina’s Comprehensive Data Management Tool enabling online editing of critical infrastructure and essential facility data for disaster modeling (www.hazusdata.org)

• Supporting Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) by creating an International Centre of Excellence on Vulnerability and Resilience Metrics (ICOE-VARM).

More information at: http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/geog/hvri/front-page

In flooding events like the 2013 Colorado floods, significant economic losses associated with building and infrastructure repairs and social disruptions have been observed. As a result, there is crucial need for reliable and accurate models that can estimate losses to buildings and other parts of civil infrastructure in order to facilitate risk-based decision-making and community resilience planning.

This poster will describe an assembly-based flood loss model for residential buildings that can be used on a building-by-building basis and considers uncertainties in structural properties and flood hazard. The assembly-based model predicts direct economic losses to residential buildings due to both structural and nonstructural flood damages as a function of flood intensities and building properties. The approach is illustrated using the case study of the 2013 Boulder, Colorado riverine flood. Using typical Boulder construction practices and local construction and material costs, loss assessment is first performed on a typical residential building in Boulder. The unit prices for flood-damaged building components are aggregated as a function of water level rise. Next, parametric studies are performed to develop a probabilistic assembly-based flood loss model for residential buildings in Boulder that integrates uncertainties associated with unit prices and building properties. The proposed model is then tested and validated with a dataset from the 2013 Colorado floods.

The proposed loss model can be used to assess the potential flood losses for any U.S. community as long as it is modified considering other building properties and local construction practices.

This study will examine the disaster impact and recovery of business properties following Hurricane Ike (2008) in Galveston, Texas. Using longitudinal parcel data, I will analyze the damage and recovery trajectories of business properties and how those patterns compare with housing damage and recovery patterns. Data used for this study will include parcel characteristics, neighborhood characteristics related to social vulnerability (e.g., socio-demographics characteristics such as income, education, and race/ethnicity), and amount of damage sustained by building structures during Hurricane Ike. 

A previous study of housing recovery in Galveston, Texas after Hurricane Ike has shown that there are significant relationships between social vulnerability factors and housing value recovery trends. Based on the literature, I anticipate that business property recovery will follow similar patterns and will be shaped by the socio-economic characteristics of their neighborhoods.

In September 2013, Boulder County Colorado received nearly a years’ worth of rain in three days, resulting in the evacuation of two towns and over 1300 people. Boulder and 14 surrounding counties were declared federal disaster areas. In the aftermath of the flood, representatives from affected communities as well as government, nonprofit, and local community leaders came together to champion community engagement and resilience at a county-wide level. Comparing local community conversations and qualitative research done in early 2014 with global evidence, BoCo Strong found that building relationships and connections at all levels is a critical component of increasing community resilience. Based on this, BoCo Strong has focused its current work on strengthening relationships within neighborhoods, increasing access to resources, and building collaborative connections across professional silos.

BoCo Strong is currently working on the achievement of four main goals:

1. Strengthen preparedness, response effectiveness, and resilience by creating a county-wide resilience network.

2. Improve non-governmental organization coordination through the development and launch of a local VOAD (voluntary agencies active in disasters) network.

3. Standardize metrics for assessing resilience through development of a common, county-wide approach and methodology.

4. Increase neighborhood capacity through targeted technical support of local resilience building initiatives.

The Boulder County VOAD is a network of Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster that coordinates skills and resources for people in need during and after a disaster. It was formed in response to the 2013 flood as a cooperative effort between the American Red Cross, Boulder County Office of Emergency Management, and the emergent group Boulder Flood Relief. 

As a local VOAD, it is based on four points of consensus that have been developed by the National VOAD: cooperation, communication, coordination, and collaboration. The mission of BoCoVOAD is to build community strength, collaboration, and resilience throughout the disaster cycle; promote implementation of lessons learned from past experience; and facilitate agile and effective response to human needs arising from disasters throughout Boulder County and neighboring communities. The purpose of the Boulder County VOAD (BoCoVOAD) is to unite the efforts of community, government, faith based organizations, businesses and non-profit organizations to provide collaborative support, holistic response, and effective relief to people affected by disaster in Boulder County and surrounding communities. 

The Boulder County VOAD strives to connect community and business leaders, government representatives, and voluntary organizations in planning and preparedness before disaster events occur. BoCoVOAD is not a service delivery organization, but rather strategically networks its autonomous member organizations’ efforts to maximize the capabilities of member organizations and to help disaster survivors and their communities.

A central tenant of hazard communication is that colleagues with principal responsibilities for planning and response sustain a 'long-term conversation' that builds trust, and increases understanding of hazards and successful protocols. This requires well maintained partnerships among a broad spectrum of officials who are knowledgeable about volcano hazards; credible within their communities; and who have personal and professional stake in their community's safety. It can require that volcano scientists facilitate learning opportunities for partners in emergency management who have little or no familiarity with eruption response.   

Scientists and officials from Colombia and the Cascades region of the United States recognized that although separated by geographic and cultural distance, their communities faced similar hazards from lahars. For the purpose of sharing best practices, the 2013 Colombia-USA binational exchange was organized by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Washington Emergency Management Division, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Nine Colombian emergency officials and scientists visited the United States to observe emergency response planning and protocols and to view the scale of a potential lahar disaster at Mount Rainier.  Ten U.S. delegates visited Colombia to absorb best practices developed after the catastrophic 1985 eruption and lahars at Nevado del Ruiz. They observed the devastation and spoke with survivors, first responders, and emergency managers responsible for post-disaster recovery efforts. Delegates returned to their nations energized and with improved knowledge about volcanic crises and effective mitigation and response.

Japan has been developing earthquake early warning systems (EEW) for more than 50 years. In the 2011 triple disaster the EEW protected the bullet train, slowing it from 170 mph to 43 mph in the seconds between the arrival of the P-wave and the S-wave. This was possible because the fault is 200 miles from the coast of Japan. Similar systems are under development in California, but the proximity of urban development to the faults lessens the warning time for critical infrastructure and concentrated human settlements.

The Mineta Transportation Institute has published a report on the development of seismic safety for the JR East transportation infrastructure, looking for lessons for the developing California High Speed Rail System. Research has shown that system design must be based on the system’s primary goal. Should the California system focus on Real Time Earthquake Engineering (RTEE) to stop trains and open fire station doors, or should it focus on Real Time Seismology (RTS) to provide guidance for first responders and residents in the hours after the earthquake? Or should California develop two systems as Japan has done? Who should review and approve the algorithms used for the decision to notify the public? Where should the funding come from?

Amphibious architecture is a non-defensive flood mitigation and climate change adaptation strategy that works in synchrony with a floodprone region’s natural cycles of flooding. An amphibious foundation retains a home’s connection to the ground by resting firmly on the earth under usual circumstances, yet it allows a building to float as high as necessary when flooding occurs. Unlike houses elevated to a fixed level, amphibious houses can easily accommodate varying levels of floodwater. Amphibious construction also offers economic benefits compared to permanent static elevation (PSE). Detailed comparisons of costs show that amphibious retrofits on average range from 1/3 to 1/2 of the cost of PSE. In new construction applications, an additional five to ten percent cost is incurred, however this is a net saving when compared to costs associated with flood damage. Loss avoidance analyses performed for amphibious retrofits in two locations demonstrate the potential cost savings of adopting buoyant foundation retrofits as a flood mitigation strategy. Lastly, permanent static elevation increases a building’s vulnerability to wind damage when compared with an amphibiated building. Our recent study determined that elevating the mean roof height of a home from 4m to 10m by implementing PSE creates a 75 percent increase in expected annual loss. Amphibious buildings, as they remain close to the ground during windstorms unless there is a flood, do not experience this increased exposure to wind. The poster will discuss the measurable cost savings of amphibious construction through loss avoidance and wind vulnerability studies conducted on proposed amphibious projects.

The Next Generation Core Competencies are the product of a recent FEMA-sponsored focus group addressing future demands on emergency managers. The world is becoming more interconnected and interdependent, transforming the systems we live and work in. Managing risk in this increasingly complex environment will require some new approaches. Accordingly, it is important to explore what core competencies are needed as we prepare emergency management professionals. Oriented toward future needs, the next generation core competencies are built on the current emergency management competencies and a disciplinary purview, a review of related competencies and global risk trends, a Delphi Study, and wider consultations.

The Next Generation Core Competencies fall under four groupings. Competencies of Broad Knowledge Base include: 1) Scientific Literacy, 2) Geographic Literacy, 3) Sociocultural Literacy, 4) Technological Literacy. The second set comprises competencies of Organizational Acumen: 5) Understanding Complex Systems, 6) Risk Governance. The third set is one that engenders Problem Solvers: 7) Critical Thinking, 8) Professional Ethics, 9) Continual Learners. Finally, competencies of Emergency Management Leadership include: 10) Operate within the Emergency Management Framework and Principles, 11) Facilitate Community Risk Understanding and Ownership, and 12) Community Leadership, Team Building, and Resource Management.

Considering the unpredictability of unconventional emergencies, emergency managers have to determine the best dispatch path of emergency relief supplies. The effectiveness of such response is highly dependent on a timely delivery of sufficient aids to the accident spot. Due to the severity of the unconventional emergencies, a large amount of emergency relief supplies may be in demand from multiple providers at different places to be transported to the affected area simultaneously. The research is based on real-time and time-varying traffic situations and seeks to find the shortest distance of the distribution route for emergency relief supplies. The study applies an improved genetic algorithm for dynamic path adjustments. It realizes the dynamic emergency relief supplies path optimization and provides an accurate, timely and visualized rescue plan, which enhance the overall effectiveness of relief activities.

Climate change has caused many natural disasters, including droughts and floods, to occur and inflict heavy losses. Among them, droughts are considered to cause the most severe damage to society. Therefore, it is essential to establish proper measures for water management and planning. However, there is a lack of quantitative analyses of future meteorological and hydrological droughts using climate models and scenarios. The objective of the study is therefore to estimate the future droughts in Han River basin in South Korea based on the current meteorological and hydrological drought data. The representative concentration pathways (RCPs) were employed to obtain future meteorological projection, and SLURP hydrological models were used to simulate hydrological characteristics for the next 2,100 years. The temporal and spatial correlation between meteorological and hydrological drought was analyzed and compared based on the various drought indeces including Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), and Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI) with three target periods (period I on 2016-2040, period II on 2041-2070, period III on 2071-2100). The result shows that the meteorological and hydrological drought has a nonlinear correlation with time-lag effect, and it could be used as a way to understand future droughts.

The IPCC (2014) reported that climate change will significantly impact human security. This poster presents some of the implications climate change has for human security, through the lens of displacement from disaster using New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina as a case. Human security provides one theoretical framework that illustrates the importance of climate change mitigation and adaption. Looking at displacement from Hurricane Katrina can provide us with a practical lens through which human security issues can be observed.

This poster presents findings from a mixed-method study of vulnerability and displacement among New Orleanians. Social vulnerability mapping was used to understand the pre-Katrina context of New Orleans (concerning economic indicators, household characteristics, housing and transportation indicators, and minority/language status). Semi-structured interviews are being conducted and will be analyzed to gain an understanding of the human security issues the displaced peoples have or are facing. Individuals that are or have been displaced, and disaster relief professionals will be interviewed. Responses will undergo thematic analysis with ATLAS.ti. 

Preliminary results show that displaced individuals may have difficulty finding secure housing, political and social agency, may experience risks to personal safety, and lose a sense of place. Further analysis seeks to find how these experiences differ from those who are not displaced. This research endeavors to provide knowledge of the specific needs of a predominantly faceless community, the displaced, and to transform these issues into disaster aid policy and programs, and mitigation strategies. 

Keywords: Adaption, Climate Change, Disaster, Displacement, Human Security, Mitigation, Vulnerability

Water infrastructure is a critical infrastructure system designed to mitigate hazards. Urban flooding results from water overwhelming infrastructure capacity, e.g., ditches and storm sewers, and threatens communities around the country. However, planning, social vulnerability, and environmental justice research suggests that low-income and communities of color may be unequally protected by outdated or unmaintained systems.

To explore this phenomenon, this case study, as one paper in a three-part dissertation, examines water infrastructure at the neighborhood level to determine if principles of environmental justice are violated. I use multivariate and spatial regression to analyze an inventory dataset of 2,400 miles of open ditch systems and water infrastructure related capital improvement projects (CIP’s).

Open ditch systems can be an obsolete form of management design especially for urbanized areas making these places physically vulnerable to flooding. That vulnerability is exacerbated when systems aren’t maintained and “wetrofitted” with low-impact development designs to enhance capacities.

It is hypothesized that open ditch systems and CIP’s are spatially clustered based on neighborhood race and class, even after controlling for tax expenditures and neighborhood age. Specifically, it is expected that blacks are particularly overburdened by open ditch systems, but lack CIP’s. Lastly, due to the interconnectedness of infrastructure systems, spatial autocorrelation is expected.

Preliminary results support these hypotheses and suggest disadvantages for hazard resiliency in certain communities by way of critical infrastructure. Detecting empirical associations provides opportunities for environmental justice advocacy towards the fair distribution of water infrastructure as a mechanism to reduce hazard exposure in communities of color.

A new division of the American Planning Association is tackling hazards issues, primarily at the community level. APA created the new membership group last year, now with over 330 dues-paying members and a LinkedIn discussion group of 580.   

The Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning group, or HMDR,  joins 20 other divisions of APA. Emphasis is on community planning to wisely manage risks and prompt effective post-disaster recovery. APA has nearly 40,000 members, many of whom are affiliated with the nation's 30,000+ communities. HMDR is oriented toward holistic integration of planning that includes hazards in the context of the built environment and the socioeconomic environment. Disasters are particularly damaging to vulnerable populations as well as hazardous locations.  Strength and resilience require sophisticated development strategies that include mixtures of community development and economic development investments to meet population needs.

The poster illustrates integrated planning processes for hazard awareness within transportation, housing, environmental protection, and socioeconomic strategies. Community planning systems are influenced by federal and state initiatives. Planning for transportation and land use, for example, are generally aligned with programs of HUD, DOT, EPA, NOAA, FEMA and others. Through webinars, workshops and other means, this new division of APA intends to promote smart planning with a special emphasis on sensitivity to hazards. Dissemination to communities will also tap the resources of 47 chapters that have a presence in all states, plus dozens of sub-state sections.

When hurricanes are approaching their jurisdictions, local emergency managers should issue protective action recommendations (PARs) to those people who are at risk. However, it is unclear how local emergency managers view different protective actions. To better understand the possible antecedents of decisions to issue PARs, this study used the Protective Action Decision Model to examine 155 Texas A&M students’ perceptions and expected implementation of 11 PARs in response to an approaching Category 4 hurricane that would make landfall in the next 36 hours. 

Participants’ ratings on two hazard-related attributes and five resource-related attributes provided a satisfactory explanation of their expected implementation of the PARs. Consistent with previous research findings, perceived effectiveness in protecting person (r ̅ = .57) had the highest correlation with PAR expected implementation, which indicates that reducing the possibility of casualties is people’s highest priority. However, the average correlation of perceived effectiveness in protecting property with PAR expected implementation (r ̅ = .19) was much lower than that of perceived effectiveness in protecting person and only slightly higher than most of resource-related attributes such as cost and time/effort (r ̅ = .12-.16). By contrast, ratings of required cooperation with others (one of the resource-related attributes) had a surprisingly high correlation with PAR expected implementation (r ̅ = .33). This is probably because respondents believe that successful implementation of PARs requires inter-organizational collaboration. Overall, these results provide an important first step toward understanding the process of PAR selection and implementation. Future research should extend this study by surveying related stakeholders to examine perceptions and expected implementation of these and other PARs.

Previous studies on natural hazard preparedness have explored how factors such as gender affect households’ levels of preparedness. While these studies have typically used individual-level survey data to explore such factors, there is limited evidence to suggest that the survey respondents are those actually responsible for making household decisions regarding natural hazard preparedness. Accordingly, these studies may rely on information that does not accurately or completely reflect either the predictors or levels of natural hazard preparedness. 

The present study, on the other hand, employs an online survey targeting married, heterosexual couples in Sarasota County, Florida, and which explicitly asks the respondents to indicate: (1) the household decision-makers regarding household hurricane preparedness during three different stages (initiation, information search and evaluation, and final decision), as well as (2) the items or activities that their households prepare in case of hurricanes using a 19-item/activity scale. The results (N=170 couples) show that more than 50 percent of the couples surveyed make joint decisions regarding household hurricane preparedness. In addition, although not statistically significant, households in which wives are the decision-makers were found to have lower levels of preparedness than households in which couples make joint decisions or households in which husbands are the decision-makers. This results of this innovative dyadic study indicate the risks of not asking the right person to answer surveys, as seen in past studies, while simultaneously providing new insight into the relationship between gender and household natural hazard preparedness.

The world’s population has been increasing. Similarly, the number of environmental disasters has been on the rise. It is also expected that the trend will continue. Especially, what is noticeable is that more and more people and property concentrate on cities, placing them at risk of disasters. In fact, urbanization almost always involves the transformation of the natural environment into the man-made environment, contributing to the changes not only in land use and land cover patterns but also in landscape and hydrology. These changes can negatively influence the natural environment, which may, in turn, lead to the increase in potential exposure to the effects of extreme events.

There has been some research done to investigate the relationship between land use/land cover change and natural hazards such as floods and hurricanes. However, little research has been conducted to test whether or not such change will likely cause the impact of natural disasters to increase. Therefore, this research aimed to analyze the effect of land cover change on environmental hazards by using GIS and remote sensing technologies. More specifically, the research investigated whether land cover change is associated with the impact of the flooding events that occurred in Texas from 1993 to 2012. One of the major findings of this research is that both the decrease in total forest area and the increase in total urban built-up area may contribute to the property damage resulting from flood events.

 

Hurricanes continue to threaten the coastlines of the United States and the people who live along them. The first line of warning for the threat of an oncoming hurricane is the meteorologist. From their guidance, warnings are issued and evacuation plans are made ready. In essence, it all starts with the meteorologists and their tools. 

This study explores the uncertainties that operational meteorologists have with hurricane track forecasting, and how meteorologists perceive translating those issues to the public. The study is based on a web survey of individual meteorologists who have hurricane forecasting experience, with a sampling method that incorporates the seeding of the survey with geographical and occupational stratifications. Specifically, the study focuses on three key areas: uncertainty displays in hurricane track forecasting, perceived media-public relationships and effectiveness on various platforms (e.g., television, web, and social media), and reliance on numerical model guidance. All questions are designed to operate on a topic expert level so that nuances can be examined. The study provides new knowledge upon the hurricane evacuation and risk communication literature with respect to understanding how hurricane forecasting meteorologists perceive hurricane track uncertainty and disseminate that information in an effective way to the public at risk.

The main object of the Pre-Disaster Effect Assessment System (PDAS) is to assess the various plans such as development, restoration, environment, even mitigation plans during the planning and performing levels for enhancing local community’s safety and preventing disasters. In spite of it’s positive outcome to reduce disasters, the PDAS has some problems on operating the system such as neglecting the changed plan and check and management of processing the projects. In this study, 12 projects sites were checked and monitored to finds the problem and its causes. From theses, we found that the problems caused from following three parts as: 1) law and operating system, 1) guideline and manual and 3) education for developers. Especially, temporary facilities such as sand basin and diversion channel are sometimes neglected during the development because of cost problems. Also these may be a cause to increase the disasters in the flood season. To solve this problem and enhance the PDAS, we developed the management guideline to check the project operating process and to use it for educating the developer. Also we enhanced the operating system to strengthen the function of PDAS as disaster risk reduction and resilient local community.

Disaster Risk Management (DRM) will benefit from a new class of affordable UAVs, satellites and other platforms/sensors. These advanced technologies, coupled with a growing abundance of data and near limitless processing capabilities, provide a unique opportunity to advance DRM.

Technology alone cannot improve DRM; the larger challenges lie in developing policies and organizational forms that integrate ongoing technological advances for improved decision making. Such challenges can be expected at this juncture in the development of technologies, particularly when coupled with legacy organizational structures that are not suited to the emerging environments.

Our research is being accomplished by small, unfunded group with significant experience in aerospace, Information and Communications Technology networks, intelligence, military planning, public policy and DRM. As such, we are able to move rapidly with a combination of research, experimentation and field deployment, all being rigorously evaluated and continually refined. The goal is to integrate emerging technical systems while identifying the organizational changes required to advance DRM.

Nowadays, damages from natural disasters namely; flood, wind, snow have occurred more often around the world. In the case of Korea, it has suffered from flood, wind and snow damages. According to Ministry of Public Safety and Security (MPSS), for the last decade, flood damage took a largest toll at 52 percent among all types of natural hazards followed by wind damage at 25 percent and snow damage at 20 percent. 

Korea implemented a natural disaster insurance policy as a means of non-structural measure for houses and green houses. However, problems arise in the application of the insurance rate because it is uniformly distributed on all places in one administrative district. It is required for the government and citizens to develop a reasonable insurance rate considering flood, wind and snow disaster and integrated management system for the insurance rate. In this study, a natural disaster insurance rate map for houses and green houses was developed by applying a 10m grid based flood, wind, and snow risk. The map considers regional natural disaster characteristics and shows various insurance rates for houses and green houses in one administrative district. An integrated system which calculates the natural disaster insurance rate by inputting 10m grid based flood, wind and snow risk in the scenario of design for houses and green houses was also developed. The system developed for the insurance rate map is very useful for both of policy makers and insurance policy holders.

Acknowledgement: This research was supported by a grant [MPSS-NH-2013-62] through the Natural Hazard Mitigation Research Group funded by Ministry of Public Safety and Security of the Korean government.

Much of the world's population is exposed to the risk of earthquakes, but there has been a limited quantity of research conducted on people's immediate response to this hazard. To address this need, the study team selected a random sample of 600 households in each city from census (Christchurch) or voter registration (Hitachi) records. 

Our recent article revealed notable similarities between the two cities in people's immediate response during the shaking but, did not address people’s actions in the earthquakes’ immediate aftermath. Our additional data indicate that—in both cities—respondents’ most frequent activities in the 30 minutes after shaking stopped (multiple responses were allowed) were to 1) try to contact family members (61.4 percent) 2) find out what happened (34.7 percent) 3) clean up broken or fallen items (30.0 percent) and 4) go back to their own home (29.4 percent). However, there were some differences between the two cities concerning other actions; 40.8 percent of respondents in Christchurch "helped people near me" but only 7.8 percent of respondents in Hitachi did so. In addition, only 5.6 percent of respondents in Hitachi returned to what they were doing after the shaking stopped, whereas 12.5 percent of respondents in Christchurch did so. Analyses in progress are examining how these immediate aftermath actions are associated with household context, social context, perceived shaking intensity, physical impacts/infrastructure loss, perception of risk, and affective reactions. 

The social science literature on earthquake impacts does not have a consistent approach to earthquake measurement and predominantly employs inadequate measures. The word “earthquake” actually refers to a different physical phenomenon in the natural sciences and the social sciences. The social sciences consider earthquakes exclusively as a phenomenon of ground shaking, while the natural sciences consider a much more complex phenomenon. 

These different perspectives have led to several misconceptions. Most notably, earthquake magnitude is often mistaken as a quantification of ground shaking or at least as a good proxy for it. This research is the first comprehensive discussion and analysis of earthquake measurement from the perspective of social sciences. Besides discussing the different theoretical strengths and weaknesses of the numerous measures that have been applied in the past, also an empirical analysis is undertaken to evaluate a number of suggested measures. For this analysis USGS ShakeMap data for more than 10,000 events is used. Peak ground acceleration (PGA), peak ground velocity (PGV), and ShakeMap instrumental intensity (MMI) are considered as candidates for an objective measure of ground shaking. It is shown that magnitude is actually not a good proxy for (summarized) ground shaking. The data is also combined with EM-DAT impact data to investigate the relative ability of the measures to explain impacts. PGA showed the best performance in this analysis and is therefore here suggested as the ground motion quantification of choice for social science research on earthquake impacts.

The type and nature of a person’s behavior during earthquake shaking influences the type of resultant injuries and fatalities. However, it is not clear from previous research how the specific actions individuals engage in either cause or prevent injuries. Previous research has relied on simulation or post-event, reflective interviews and questionnaire studies. Such studies are subject to potential limitations such as the quality of the participant's memory, recall bias, or (perceived) realism of a simulation. Thus, to better understand the relationship between human behavior and injury, researchers need a robust and repeatable methodology.

The widespread use of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), cell phones, and other sources of video footage from actual emergencies allows an unprecedented opportunity to improve the understanding of human behavior during earthquakes and other crisis events. Security video footage is an underutilized data source, which can provide convergent validation of findings from other types of behavioral studies, as well as exploration of context, patterns of behavior and the social and environmental influences of behavior.

Objective observation of human behaviour can then provide an evidence base to answer questions such as:

• What actions do individuals engage in during and immediately following earthquake shaking? Are recommended protective action recommendations being performed?

• To what extent are earthquake related casualties (deaths and injuries) directly related to individual behaviour?

• How can organisations train staff to better respond in an earthquake and other emergency events?

• How does context change observed behaviors?

This project was to implement the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 in Taiwan and to find what parts were missing from scientific projects supported by the Central Government.

Our team formulated an analytical matrix which had one dimension showing five localized goals taken from the goals in Sendai Framework, and another representing priorities for action in Sendai Framework that related to these five goals. We then applied this matrix to analyze all scientific projects proposed by different units of the Central Government in Taiwan from 2011 to 2015.

A total of 417 projects were examined. The results showed that the goal of reducing disaster impacts on vulnerable people—which is important to Taiwan—earned the least interest of the Central Government, whereas the goal of increasing accesses to disaster (risk) information was a focal point. Also, the priority of better governance did not gain as much attention as the priority to understand disaster risk did, since the former usually involved more advanced tasks than the latter.

We also had results of priorities of action for each goal. For instance, although there were a lot of projects on the goal of increasing accesses to disaster (risk) information, but very few discussed the priority of better governance or of more investment. These results identified gaps in the current government-funded scientific research and could assist in planning further research topics in Taiwan.

Since the late 1970s, the All-Hazards approach to disaster preparedness and response has been an integral part of the design and execution of disaster management systems in the United States. Given recent discussions regarding its continued relevance in the present day, a look back at the policy origins and original uses of the All-Hazards approach may shed some light on questions of continued usefulness of the approach itself. Specifically, this paper explores the policy origins of the All-Hazards approach in the United States. Drawing on the body of disaster literature and utilizing archival document analysis methods, we examine the origins of the approach as a by-product of proposals made by the National Governors Association in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which aimed to consolidate disaster preparedness and response activities within the federal government in order to streamline operations and better serve the States. The origin of the All-Hazards approach as a policy solution may have continued implications for its usefulness in the present day. Additional comparisons to other models of disaster management that have been pressed into service as broader solutions, including the Incident Command System (ICS) framework, which has its origins in the Fire Service, may provide additional context for further research.

In this study, I will use American Community Survey data to examine the socio-demographic composition of areas surrounding superfund sites in Harris County, Texas. The analysis will be conducted at the block group level and utilize variables commonly used in social vulnerability studies including race, ethnicity, income, and poverty. This analysis will add to the environmental justice literature as similar studies have mostly been conducted at the national level. In light of the national level studies, it is expected that populations surrounding superfund sites in Harris County will have more ethnic and racial minorities and lower incomes than the general population. 

Using repeat photography and geographic information systems (GIS), we visualize and assess patterns of housing damage and recovery for the 2013 West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion. Our research questions are: 1. How does damage and recovery vary across space in West, and how do structure characteristics and blast radius predict damage and also recovery at year one? 2. Are adapted visual damage and recovery assessment tools from natural disasters reliable and valid for technological disasters? 3. How might existing visualization and mapping tools and techniques be used to enhance disaster management processes and what are the implications specifically for recovery and future hazard mitigation planning? 

 Within a few days of the explosion, Google completed a Street View™ imagery of West. We used this opportunity to develop a dataset of photos of each parcel in the area of town most affected. The photos were rated on a scale of 0-9 according to the extent of damage using an adapted version of the Tornado Impact Scale. 

One year later, we drove through West and took the same photos ourselves. These photos were rated on a scale of 1-4 according to amount of rebuilding completed. Using tax record data on the age and pre-impact value of the structure, we found that distance from explosion was the best predictor of damage, but house value was the best predictor of recovery at year one. Our research also has implications for land use controls and critical infrastructure placement to mitigate technological disaster risks.

Households affected by natural disasters are faced with many difficult decisions. Among the most significant is whether to remain in their original (disaster affected) community or, as a protective measure, to permanently relocate to a new community. At present, our understanding of the factors that influence relocation decision-making is limited. It is imperative that we increase this understanding as 1) the decision of whether to rebuild or relocate has significant implications for disaster recovery; 2) climate change impacts are expected to increase the number of households facing this issue, and; 3) these decisions are shaped by state and federal disaster mitigation policy, primarily through home buyout programs. 

This study builds on the nascent literature on post-disaster relocation by examining household decision-making in Moore, Oklahoma, a community that was devastated by an EF5 tornado in 2013. In the fall and winter of 2015-16, approximately 5000 residents whose homes were located in the damage path of the tornado were asked to complete a mailed, self-administered questionnaire related to the impact of the tornado on their perceptions of home and community. With a focus on potential drivers of relocation, this study examines factors that may influence household relocation decision-making, including social capital, place attachment, neighborhood quality, exposure, risk perception, and financial factors. Findings from this study provide valuable insight into household residential decision-making in the context of an acute disaster with little warning time, and have implications for post-disaster relocation policy.

My proposed project explores how vulnerable individuals, specifically Hispanic women living in Leadville, Colorado and working in nearby ski resorts, understand their risk to hazards and the concepts of resilience and disaster recovery and how these perceptions align with the assumptions and constructs upon which current conceptualizations of resilience are based at the state level. This case study will contribute to the vulnerability literature and resilience literature through examining the relationship between vulnerable individuals and their experiences with disasters, the burdens they deal with on a daily basis, and the resources they may mobilize during disasters and afterward. 

By examining these factors, this study will also contribute to a concrete understanding of how building resilience in vulnerable communities, specifically in Colorado, can either facilitate or hinder their disaster recovery through, for example, conflating survival and resilience and thereby masking their continued vulnerability.

Post-disaster reconstruction has traditionally emphasized rapid results in place of long-term solutions. This research seeks to improve recovery outcomes by analyzing how inter-organizational coordination, stakeholder participation and training influence the sustainability and resilience of housing. To do this, we analyzed 20 shelter reconstruction programs over a 24-month period following Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. We collected data on program processes through semi-structured interviews and observations with community members, NGO staff and local government officials; we then administered survey questionnaires at project completion to assess outcomes. After conducting qualitative analysis using QSR NVivo, we calibrated and assigned fuzzy membership scores to both casual and outcome conditions for each housing program. We are currently employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), a hybrid approach between in-depth case studies and large sample methods, to analyze and determine what combinations of strategies used in the planning, design and construction phases of projects are associated with infrastructure sustainability and resilience. Preliminary findings highlight the important role of government agencies in sustaining humanitarian coordination. For participation, imposed design decision-making led to poor incorporation of local knowledge, resulting in deficient maintenance. Finally, organizational approaches to training were found to misalign with community learning styles, creating a disconnect in knowledge acquisition. Future findings will contribute to knowledge about post-disaster recovery processes, and the influence of coordination, participation and training on shelter outcomes. As a result, implementing organizations, working together with communities, may be able to improve post-disaster shelter outcomes.

The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies has several guides to assist in enhancing resilience and security.

Communication with Vulnerable Populations: A Transportation and Emergency Management Toolkit provides a framework and tools for constructing scalable, adaptable communication built from a network of agencies from public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Fundamental Capabilities of Effective All-Hazards Infrastructure Protection, Resilience, and Emergency Management for State Departments of Transportation synthesizes the most recent federal and state guidance and research from a state DOT perspective and describes capabilities for state DOTs that address all-hazards infrastructure protection, resilience, and emergency management and reflects National Preparedness Goals. The  guide provides a resource for state DOTs to support integration of infrastructure protection and resilience into operations and infrastructure programs.

Managing Catastrophic Transportation Emergencies: A Guide for Transportation Executives was developed to assist new chief executives of state DOTs and is based on the thoughts and advice of transportation leaders who have been in similar positions. The guide provides basic information about the types of emergency incidents and events that impact transportation agencies and questions and issues that should be considered to assist the agency in preparing for all-hazards emergency incidents.

A Guide to Planning Resources on Transportation and Hazards provides a framework for thinking about the stages of a disaster from a transportation perspective; describes the most current and innovative hazards-related research to a transportation audience; and introduces research from fields that are not always associated with transportation engineering (including social science, mitigation and land use planning, and policy analysis).

More information can be found at: www.TRB.org/SecurityPubs

While the All-Hazards approach has been a fixture in disaster management in the United States for approximately three decades, influential experts debate the limits of its relevance in contemporary emergency management. 

 This paper explores the boundaries of applicability of the All-Hazards approach for a range of hazard types, especially public health emergencies and complex crises such as environmental disasters. Drawing on the disaster and public health literatures, we examine previous research in three areas of relevance to these events: convergence, providing medical services, and risk and crisis communication. Although events have specific characteristics unique to each particular hazard, the literature demonstrates that there are sufficient similarities in these areas to advocate for the continued utility of the All-Hazards approach. Disasters and public health emergencies often witness the convergence of people, material, and information. They share similar challenges and requirements in risk and warning communication, and present many of the same challenges to providing event-related medical services in the response. 

This poster presents three examples of areas where overlap exists across hazards. Research is needed to explore further parallels between hazards, and should test the boundaries of relevance in other phases of the disaster cycle, particularly in mitigation and recovery where community conflict can replace the altruistic tone often set in response. Future work should move beyond reliance on existing literature to conduct direct, empirical comparisons across event types, and include other kinds of environmental or public health hazards, such as the current water crisis in Flint, Michigan. 

Social vulnerability (SoVi) has been proposed as a condition that will influence how communities will cope with natural disasters and will help explain the consequences of these events. Researchers, propose that the social conditions of the communities, will interact with the disasters and will put those with more vulnerability to greater consequences. In the present study we explored the role of social vulnerability in a representative sample of households in Chile (71,460) that was exposed to an earthquake. Using the data from Casen terremoto we first developed a social vulnerability index and then examined how it related with probable post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We found that the PTSD prevalence is higher among the earthquake affected communes (PTSD prevalence = 0.19) than the unaffected communes (PTSD prevalence = 0.04) (t = 12.27, p-value < 0.001). The relationships between pre-disaster social vulnerability index and PTSD prevalence are different between earthquake affected communes and the unaffected communes. In the unaffected communes, there is a positive correlation between the PTSD prevalence with SoVi (r = 0.34, p-value = 0.004); however, in the earthquake affected communes, PTSD prevalence is not associated with SoVi (r = 0.05, p-value = 0.530). An interaction between magnitude and PTSD was also found among those affected communities that also reveals that we should further explore the role of SoVi and the consequences of the disaster in order to better understand this relationship.

Fast and effective evacuation can be a life-saving decision for people who are exposed to natural disasters, such as a tsunami and when facing flash floods. From previous research we know that evacuation is a collective behavior, performed with close relatives and friends, and that is closely related to the perception of risk and the need to search for safety. Quarantelli (1980) has proposed a four stages process, starting with the warning and ending with the return. Researchers have focused on understanding the first stages, however very few studies have focused on the return stage, and very little have described the whole process. This is very relevant considering that in some disasters victims may die not only for the failure to evacuate, but also because they decide when the threat is not over. 

This is the problem addressed in the present study. Using surveys we studied the evacuation process on two samples: one sample from Iquique who had to evacuate after the earthquake and tsunami that affected this area in April 1, 2014, and the other one from the Atacama Region that had to evacuate due to flash floods on March 25, 2015. We describe how the process unfolded for both groups starting when the event occurred and the warning was issued, and compare the role of different factors in this process. Sociodemographic factors were also predictors of early return. Discussion focuses on the need to define a successful evacuation and how the citizens should be informed about this process.

By 2050, the population of individuals aged 65 or older will increase 120 percent from 40 million to more than 88 million. Demand for housing will shift dramatically, which will result in long-term care (LTC) facilities locations becoming even more important given that their numbers are going to rise. As such, the need for services to help older adults, age in place, will grow exponentially. 

Long-term care (LTC) residents are among the most vulnerable population during disasters. For instance 70 percent of the victims who died during Hurricane Katrina were among the age of 65 or older. Many of them lost their lives because they sheltered in place while others lost their lives because they evacuated. This indicates that location and proximity to hazardous areas are of great importance to emergency managers. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the current state of preparedness of long-term care (LTC) facilities for evacuation or sheltering in place during emergencies and disasters, as well as evaluating the current locations in an urban setting and the nearby hazards. Findings and recommendation of this study have the potential to improve the current state of emergency and disaster preparedness and improve the community resilience in which LTC facilities are crucial part. 

The social vulnerability research literature has often found inequalities in disaster impacts from natural hazards, particularly with respect to floods and hurricanes. Most recently the literature has begun to speculate that these variations may be due to a lack of investment, if not disinvestment, in neighborhood and community level infrastructure in minority and low-income areas. This research uses visual sociology and public health approaches through participant driven photo elicitation to capture variations in the quality and nature of infrastructure within high-risk neighborhoods in Houston, Texas.

Puerto Rico is highly susceptible to natural hazards such as flooding, tropical storms, coastal storm surge, and hurricanes. Climate change can result in an increase in the frequency and intensity of natural hazards. The main goal of this project was to develop a Community Based Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the Municipality of Dorado, Puerto Rico. To do so, we sought to develop a participatory approach that would allow us to a) understand what changes are observed in the distribution, composition and social vulnerability of the population of Dorado in the last two decades, b) understand how risk and vulnerability varies according to social, economic, and demographic characteristics, c) explore the adaptation measures adopted by residents of communities who are frequently affected by localized hazard events, d) identify and examine mitigation and preparedness options, e) understand the structure, organization, norms, practices, arrangements, and alliances among communities and their relationship with local and State disaster related government agencies, f) address issues of representation in participatory approaches to assure that the proposed Plan provides a comprehensive assessment and informed recommendations. 

This project is part of an effort, sponsored by the Coastal Zone Management Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DRNA), to develop guidelines for Community Based Climate Change Adaptation Plans.

Until recently disaster researchers have failed to examine the experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer (LGBTQ) people in the context of disaster. This means we do not understand how sexual orientation and/or gender identity affect how individuals prepare for, experience, respond to, and recover from disasters. 

The present study seeks to contribute to a growing number of studies working to fill this knowledge gap. Specifically, this study examines the relationship between sexual orientation and hurricane evacuation plans. Using data from a web-based survey conducted in 2014, we find that sexual orientation may not affect whether or not one has an evacuation plan, or their willingness to evacuate. However, we find that Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual (LGB) respondents are less likely to evacuate to a public hurricane shelter than straight respondents. We argue that LGB respondents’ shelter aversion may be related to their perceptions of shelter safety. We encourage emergency managers to begin working with local LGBTQ organizations and citizens in order to create shelters and services that are accessible to LGBTQ residents.

Severe storms and floods account for the majority of all major disasters globally and in the United States. The annual number of flood-related fatalities in Texas typically exceeds that of all other states. 

The method that is used to retrieve person(s) from swift water (water flowing at rate of one knot or greater) is referred to as swift water rescue. Swift water rescue data were obtained from the Texas Fire Marshal’s Office and analyzed to describe the characteristics of swift water rescues. Between 2005 and 2014, 3,256 swift water rescue events were reported from 136 counties in Texas. Over half (54.6 percent, n=1777) of all rescues occurred in the 27 counties that form the Flash Flood Alley in Texas. Less than 1.0 percent (n=18) were reported from 49 counties designated as completely rural, or with an urban population less than 2,500. 

Increases in swift water rescues were seen between March and September. County-level data was utilized for this analysis and demographic data was missing in all but 2 percent (n=47) of the total incidents. Both factors limit our ability to identify specific populations at risk or target interventions to those at highest risk. Information describing occurrence and distribution of swift water rescue events could be leveraged to inform disaster planning, mitigation, and response strategies and to promote public awareness of flood risks and outcomes. We believe that this is the first epidemiological investigation that characterizes swift water rescues in the United States.

After the March 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster, Japan evacuated residents within a 19-mile radius. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recommended Americans evacuate to 50-miles. Meanwhile, U.S. federal regulations require “emergency planning zones” within ten miles of nuclear plants.

A 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that without planning and regular public information, voluntary “shadow evacuations” can complicate the evacuation of people most immediately in danger by putting additional traffic on roadways.

Refusing to update its guidance, the NRC claimed that additional planning is unnecessary, emphasizing “state and local authorities have a robust capacity to effectively evacuate the public in response to life-threatening emergencies.”

DAP contacted over 250 jurisdictions across 26 states and within 50 miles of domestic nuclear plants seeking documents and information related to preparedness, including evacuation planning.

• Over 50 million people live within 50 miles of a U.S. nuclear power plant.

• Only 11 out of 37 jurisdictions within ten miles of a nuclear power plant, and seven out of 180 jurisdictions between ten and 50 miles, could provide any shadow evacuation planning.

• Less than 20 percent of jurisdictions between ten and 50 miles of the plants could satisfactorily provide any emergency plans specific to nearby nuclear power plants.

• Only 62 percent of the jurisdictions within ten miles of a nuclear power plant provided any educational materials or planning shared with residents. This is notable, as NRC regulations require these jurisdictions to regularly share this information with residents.

Education is a fundamental human right. Yet, disasters have the potential to disrupt access to education for the youngest survivors of extreme events. Large-scale disasters may lead to physical injury or death among students, teachers, and staff who occupy unsafe school buildings. Even when schools withstand disaster, disruption to lifeline services—water, sewage, electricity, communication, transportation—can render schools unsafe for occupancy. This can delay recovery as buildings can no longer be used as a community sheltering space, students lose valuable instructional hours when temporarily or permanently displaced, teachers and staff may become unemployed, and parents cannot return to work or community engagement and recovery activities without proper educational facilities available for their children.

School facilities are often considered a high priority when communities plan and mitigate for disasters in the United States. Yet, little systematic information is available regarding how schools have been affected by past disasters or how schools are working to become resilient in the face of future threats.

This poster will begin to fill this gap by exploring the short- and long-term effects of the costliest disasters (2010-2014) to school facilities by documenting: (1) how many schools were moderately or severely damaged or destroyed in these events; (2) what information is publically available about the extent of school damage and disruption in disaster; and (3) what kind of data is necessary to be able to assess and compare preparedness and mitigation strategies across sites, so that we improve preparedness planning for schools in the future.

Drought is one of the most expensive natural hazards affecting the United States, and tools are needed that can enhance existing drought information and tailor it for specific drought management contexts. A key to this is understanding how diverse groups are impacted by drought, and then providing relevant information about those impacts in a way that aids in both proactive decision-making to reduce adverse impacts and in coping with the impacts when they occur. To this end, we explore the question: How can integrating locally significant drought impacts with advances in climate research be used to make drought information more salient for risk management? 

In this poster, we develop and demonstrate a generalized framework that can be used to connect local impacts with readily available drought information, thus increasing the usability of existing drought products in decision making. The framework includes seeking stakeholder input from interviews to identify critical thresholds below which water needs are not met for important uses. These thresholds are integrated into a predictive model that translates existing drought information to the likelihood of exceeding the identified thresholds. The framework is demonstrated using a case study in south-central Oklahoma, which is highly prone to drought and has experienced management challenges. The translation of drought information into locally meaningful knowledge can be used to help guide management choices before and during drought periods in a way that is consistent with stakeholder values. 

This study develops a place-based typology of social vulnerability to Hurricane Sandy for New York City in 2012 that emphasizes housing impacts and residential recovery in the storm's wake. Neighborhoods defined by the City of New York (n=188) are categorized using census, cadastral, and remote sensing products provided by the city's open data catalog. Variables of interest chosen to reflect differentiation in neighborhood residential risk were separated into two thematic "domains" of vulnerability (socioeconomic and biophysical). Latent variables were extracted for each domain using principal components analysis, then combined to generate a final classification using k-means clustering. The classification results were compared to measures of exposure (storm surge and sustained windspeed), households damaged, and housing recovery from Sandy (approved applications for assistance, construction starts and reimbursement for both single and multifamily housing). 

The results indicate that for single-family housing, increased rates of household-level applications and approval for assistance – particularly in neighborhoods surrounding Jamaica Bay and in eastern Staten Island – correspond more closely to their levels of exposure and housing damage during Sandy than to forms of socioeconomic and material risk linked to their representative groups. Besides a few notable cases, these effects largely carry to levels of construction starts and household reimbursement. These findings suggest the need for further investigation of different processes of recovery that may have occurred within individual neighborhoods in Sandy’s aftermath. The classification results, in turn, are discussed as a starting point for linking neighborhood-specific vulnerabilities to localized trajectories of post-Sandy residential recovery.

Community-based organizations (CBOs), especially those that serve marginalized groups, are critical fixtures in the daily lives of their clients. When disaster strikes, nonprofit CBOs fill needed gaps and extend their roles in response and recovery activities. While studies of organizational response and cross-sector collaboration demonstrate a lack of disaster planning within many CBOs, few of these studies focus on CBOs’ disaster experiences—specifically of those that serve vulnerable and marginalized groups such as the homeless. In addressing this gap, I argue that homeless service organizations (HSOs) experience compounded vulnerability because of social and structural factors that place them in a weakened position during disaster. Not only do structural conditions weaken the ability of these organizations to meet the needs of a growing client base, but the marginalized status of their clients also requires unique considerations for these organizations during disaster, resulting in compounded vulnerability. Using the 2013 Boulder Floods as a context in which to examine these processes, I draw on over seventy hours of participant observation and data from 17 semi-structured interviews with staff members from homeless adult service organizations. The information presented in this poster is part of a larger study that also examines homeless individuals' experiences during the floods and incorporates perspectives from city and county public officials on addressing the needs of marginalized groups during disaster.

The purpose of this study is to analyze gender differences in any barriers affecting the process of recovery when comparing natural disasters and man-made disasters. In particular, this study will utilized qualitative data from two towns in the United States—Granary and West in Texas—to examine gender differences. Granary suffered from an EF-4 tornado in the Rancho Brazos neighborhood while West suffered from an explosion from a fertilizer plant. The differences in type of disaster will allow a comparison of gender variations and differences. Through coding of qualitative interviews from resident interviews in each community, as well as additional relevant qualitative data, this study will examine and explore gender differences that arise in how women and men react to disasters, how they move forward in the recovery process and whether there are variations between the type of disaster. The findings will complement the gender disaster literature and help understand whether there are gender variations in disaster response and recovery between human induced versus natural disasters.   

Emergency management practitioners have increasingly recognized the potential of online social media to diffuse information apropos disasters (manmade or natural). However, this is still a burgeoning field with many crucial information gaps. 

Since 2010, the HEROIC project has collected a multitude of data that has been used to further our understanding of formal and informal communication in response to hazardous events. In this poster, we highlight recent work that focuses on: (1) how message content, with and without the inclusion of visual images, influences predicted message retransmission and (2) how the number of followers for emergency management organizations’ Twitter accounts change over the course of hazards. More specifically, we present results showing retransmission rates of Ebola messages that were sent from local, state, and federal public health agencies’ Twitter accounts. 

We find that messages containing content about the hazard, information on how to take protective measures, or described official activity are predicted to be retransmitted at higher rates; we also find that Tweets including a word graphic or instructive graphic have higher predictions of retransmission. Additionally, we present results that track the number of followers for emergency management organizations before, during and after disasters. Our results show that many new people begin following emergency management organizations during a disaster. Moreover, we find that overall these new followers continue to follow emergency management organizations after the disaster. Taken together, these results can inform emergency management organizations on how to better use social media to communicate with the general public during hazards.

This poster presents multiple findings from data collected in North Carolina regarding decision-making for hurricane evacuation as a part of the research for two separate National Science Foundation-funded grants (Human & Social Dynamics and a Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability Type 2 grant). 

Residents use a variety of information sources, cues, and other factors to make decisions regarding if, when, and how to evacuate. This decision is complex and unfolds differently depending on the context of the storm, the family, and the community. The images on this poster show various findings, including the differences of voluntary versus mandatory evacuation compliance across demographics, patterns of information seeking in minority residences, perceptions of storm severity and threat (reasons for evacuating or not), how pets affect evacuation compliance, and qualitative data on stated protective action during vehicle evacuations hurricane scenarios.

The findings together provide implications for both scholars and emergency managers regarding warning messages, the timing of evacuation orders, and other aspects of planning for hurricane evacuation. 

On September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall near Galveston, Texas and left behind a trail of destruction. Hurricane Ike is reported as the third costliest natural disaster in American history. Previous research on Hurricane Ike has focused on disaster impacts and housing recovery, paying particular attention to the recovery of residential structures. This research will focus on the spatial patterns of impact and recovery of neighborhoods as captured by census block-groups. Particular attention will focus on variations in neighborhood recovery based on pre-Ike socio-economic characteristics. Specifically the consequences of neighborhood socio-economic characteristics with respect to race, ethnicity, and income will be examined for variations in neighborhood recovery. Data covering eight years, from 2008-2015, will be utilized to assess longer-term recovery trends than generally are possible. 

Hitachi is a coastal city located roughly 190 miles (306 km) from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake epicenter. The tsunami heights were approximately 14.7 feet (4.5 m) high when tsunami hit the Hitachi Port. This study examined people’s tsunami risk perception immediately after the earthquake struck. The household survey data was collected from 332 Hitachi respondents from January-April, 2012 with a 55.3 percent response rate. The survey asked respondents to report their perception of tsunami occurrence, their expected time of tsunami arrival, expected tsunami damage/injuries, and evacuation decision. This survey also collected respondents’ demographic data such as age, sex, education level, etc. 

This study yielded several interesting findings. First, the survey showed that 15.4 percent of the respondents thought the earthquake would not cause a tsunami at all. For those who believed the tsunami would strike Hitachi, the average expected time of first tsunami wave arrival was 24 minutes after the earthquake stuck. This is about six minutes earlier than the actual first wave arrived in Hitachi. In addition, respondents’ mean ratings of expected damage/injuries are at the lower end (2.84 on a 1-5 Likert-scale). In addition, compared to other educational levels, high school graduates were more likely to believe the tsunami would destroy their homes. Finally, the data also indicated only 18.90 percent of the respondents evacuated because of tsunami threat.