Poster Session Abstracts

ShakeAlert® earthquake early warning (EEW) is the first public alert system in the nation to provide rapid mass notification when an earthquake is detected. Although widespread mobile phone alerts began in California in 2019 and were adopted by Oregon and Washington in 2021, little is known about what drives successful implementation of EEW in institutional settings such as schools. To address this gap in knowledge, our research team conducted a mixed methods study on how K-12 schools can best adopt and implement EEW. For the first phase of our research, we interviewed school district administrators, emergency managers, teachers, parents, and students in Anchorage, Alaska (n=88), and Ridgecrest, California (n=30), in 2020. Results from our qualitative analysis showed that respondents had a limited understanding of EEW or how it might function in schools. They also identified potential barriers, including limited funding, disruption in classrooms, and a lack of clarity on correct protective actions. For the second phase, our research team conducted an online survey of superintendents (N=225) in Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington in 2022. Superintendents who were familiar with EEW were positive about the benefits of the system. However, 62% of superintendents had not heard of it. Respondents also identified funding as the biggest barrier to adoption and thought false alerts could impact teacher and parent confidence in the system. Together, these qualitative and quantitative findings suggest that better communication is needed to educate school district leadership about funding support and the operation of ShakeAlert. We also recommend EEW implementation be coupled with regular drills.

This poster describes using Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) to create locally tailored datasets for better hazard planning and mitigation. The focus area is Southeast Texas, where communities on the U.S. Gulf Coast confront a variety of natural hazards and industrial threats. We focus on how PGIS might improve equity and minimize social vulnerability. The study dives into the issues that marginalized communities confront and compares the efficiency of PGIS as a technique for supporting the development of social vulnerability indices that represent community realities. We analyze the need to thoroughly understand social vulnerability, considering elements such as socioeconomic position, cultural features, and institutional qualities. We also examine claims that social vulnerability elements should be included in Geographic Information System (GIS) frameworks to improve hazard mapping accuracy. Furthermore, we discuss the obstacles and possibilities that come with using PGIS in disaster mitigation measures. Our study recognized that the absence of comprehensive meteorological and climate data is a significant barrier along with the complexity of working with various populations confronting multiple hazards. In addition, our poster describes the potential to use PGIS in community-led hazard mapping and management activities by including local populations in data collection and assessment. Lastly, we emphasize the need to understand vulnerability to develop more effective and inclusive disaster management plans. Overall, PGIS is a helpful technique for promoting informed decision-making, aiding hazard mitigation measures, and resolving resource inequities

Advancements in technology have made hazard data increasingly available. Officials in rural communities with limited resources, however, often face challenges in accessing, interpreting, and applying the data to assess vulnerabilities and plan future development. Furthermore, the hazard data not being paired with relevant population and infrastructure data makes the actual vulnerability assessment difficult. To address this challenge, we collaborated with Valley County, Idaho, to co-create a web tool following a user-centered design approach, consolidating hazards, social vulnerability, and infrastructure data to help local officials with risk management, decision-making, and resilience planning. We began the project with listening sessions, identifying data gaps, community needs, and building relationships with the community partners, including emergency managers, project planners, decision-makers, and health officials of the county. To select web tool features and datasets, we held focus groups and one-on-one meetings with community partners. This poster describes a study evaluating the community partner engagement process based on the Five-Feature Framework for Stakeholder Engagement in Natural Resource Management. Recently, the team conducted a workshop in Valley County to test the beta version of this web tool (bit.ly/vc_betatool), where the tool received positive feedback. In the last phase of the project, the team will finalize the web tool by incorporating additional feedback from the community partners and develop a sustainability plan to ensure this tool is usable for resilience planning for years to come. We can see this study as an example of successfully engaging community partners toward developing user-centered tools for resilience planning in rural communities in Idaho.

In the early morning of February 6, 2023, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and parts of northern Syria. The earthquake was succeeded by multiple high-magnitude aftershocks (5.6 - 7.5). The earthquake caused 50,339 deaths and 311,000 collapsed or severely damaged houses. Following the disaster, the Turkish Government asked for global help with search, rescue, and medical aid. This poster describes a study of international responders' effectiveness in search and rescue, specifically addressing challenges and barriers. A semi-structured interview guide, developed by a panel of experts, was utilized to interview 18 of the first responders from the Jordan International Search and Rescue team (JSAR) who deployed to Turkey to participate in the search and rescue operations. The JSAR team is certified as a heavy international team and works under the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG). The primary findings revealed successful coordination of the international response of over 90 teams. Nevertheless, the response encountered numerous obstacles and difficulties, possibly attributed to the magnitude of the catastrophe. First, challenges related to management of resources included issues like inefficient allocation and suboptimal collaboration with local authorities and volunteers. Additionally, challenges arose from local conditions, including unpredictable weather patterns and treacherous road conditions. Finally, there were issues pertaining to communication and coordination, such as communication with local authorities and home country. The results highlight the urgent need to reevaluate and revamp existing methods for better disaster relief.

In the dynamic landscape of natural hazard and disaster events, effective data collection practices extend beyond the event's immediate aftermath to encompass the complete disaster cycle. This poster describes the critical role of social media platforms, specifically TikTok, in facilitating the transmission of community-based knowledge during all stages of hazard events. It is based on a study that emphasizes the importance of respectful engagement with individuals' emotional and physical experiences, as based on qualitative research ethics principles. This poster advocates for the use of social media-based data communication strategies in disaster research, emphasizing their ability to overcome the biases inherent in traditional reporting mechanisms and provide a more inclusive representation of community experiences throughout the disaster cycle. This approach, which uses TikTok storytelling, not only addresses the challenge of collecting perishable qualitative data, but also promotes a more equitable and ethical approach to disaster research. Using Hurricanes Ida and Ian as case studies, the poster emphasizes the value of TikTok videos as a tool for researchers to gain nuanced insights into community perspectives on risk, recovery efforts, and adaptation patterns across diverse populations. Researchers can bypass traditional information channels by using TikTok data to directly access narratives from affected individuals, increasing the equity and authenticity of the data collected.

Understanding how people are affected by power outages is becoming more critical with the increased likelihood of electric grid disruptions. There is little previous research, however, focusing on the societal impacts of power outages, specifically how a person's or household's demographics influence outage experiences. While the demographic background of a person matters, where someone lives also influences a household's power outage experience. Prior studies found differences between outage duration and living in urban and rural areas. This poster describes research examining how people in rural, suburban, and urban areas were affected by power outages caused by Winter Storm Elliott in 2022 using two ten-county areas around Buffalo, NY, and Raleigh, NC, as case study sites. Data collection involved a Qualtrics quota sample with 2,063 participants, of which 1,226 experienced a power outage. The research hypothesized that those who live in rural areas experienced longer power outages and greater unhappiness, had lower social capital, and used fewer adaptations than those in urban or suburban areas. Results suggest that location may be less influential than previously thought when considering adverse power outage effects and rural households being more resilient during these events.

This poster describes research employing Differential Interferometric SAR (DInSAR) and Persistent Scatterers (PS-DInSAR) techniques utilizing 42 SENTINEL-1 satellite images to analyze an active landslide in the Chango Population Center, Peru. DInSAR reveals accumulated ground deformation ranging from -31.3 mm to 56.6 mm along the satellite line-of-sight (LOS), considering potential atmospheric disturbances. PS-DInSAR identifies slow and extremely slow landslide phenomena, estimating east-west (E-W) and vertical deformation. Soil displacements range from -60 to -70 mm/y for the E-W component and between -25 to 30 mm/y vertically. PS-DInSAR maps 14 active landslide areas (hotspots) occurring seasonally, particularly in the CPC near the primary escarpment. Cluster analysis identifies extreme cold and hot spots, showcasing the highest deformations during the wet season. A robust correlation (R2 = 0.74) between DInSAR and PS-DInSAR results in the ascending orbit is observed. The study advocates for optimizing resources through a focused soil deformation monitoring system, engineering controls, and risk assessment. The research underscores the necessity of conscious evaluation for the potential relocation of the study area due to extensive deformation, even in previously identified landslides. This study paves the way for implementing a near-real-time alert system based on SAR applications for proactive prevention and monitoring purposes in high-risk landslide areas.

This poster describes research that aims to assess the benefit-to-cost tradeoffs of expanding tornado load provisions to the design of residential buildings. Recent updates to the American Society of Civil Engineers/Structural Engineering Institute (ASCE/SEI 7-22) standards, incorporated into the 2024 International Building Code, require that Risk Category III and IV buildings in tornado-prone areas be designed to withstand tornado loads for the first time. Annually, over 1,200 tornadoes are reported in the United States, and post-disaster evaluations consistently reveal that residential buildings, including single-family, multi-family, and manufactured homes, account for two-thirds of the structural damage caused by tornadoes and most tornado-related deaths. However, these homes are not currently covered under the new provisions. This study simulates synthetic tornado scenarios and estimates community-level building damage, direct economic loss, and household dislocation. The methodology employs a stochastic damage framework to assign damage states to buildings using building fragility functions, simulated tornado wind speeds, and randomly generated numbers. Direct financial losses to the building inventory due to physical damage will be calculated using building damage factors and the buildings’ replacement costs, estimated by comparing home market values before and after a tornado event using the 2020 Nashville Tornado and the 2021 Mayfield Tornado as case studies. Conclusions from this research will explain the economic feasibility of designing residential buildings to withstand tornados. Analysis will assess this feasibility at the individual building level, community level, and national level and will evaluate dislocation and disruption as an important part of the decision equation.

Extreme heat affects a variety of geographic areas and has a wide scope of impacts, ranging from increased morbidity to productivity losses and critical infrastructure damage. This range of impacts presents a challenge for communication because it requires understanding and collaboration across disciplines. Coordinated communication efforts are essential to ensuring a heat-resilient future. The National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) and White House Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat (IWG) collaborated across more than 20 federal departments and agencies to communicate about heat risk and safety. From November 2023 to January 2024, the NIHHIS-IWG Interagency Communications Working Group gathered federal and non-federal partners for three workshops to discuss challenges and opportunities for effective heat communication. These workshops informed the first comprehensive Federal Heat Communications Plan. The Plan outlines strategies and best practices to achieve the following: (a) improve whole-of-government coordination for preparing for and raising awareness of the dangers of heat across timescales, (b) tailor heat communication outputs and messages for different audiences, (c) reach a wide range of communities, particularly those at higher risk of heat-related illness, (d) outline communication activities and agency coordination, and (e) strengthen relationships with non-federal partners who are also working on extreme heat.

The Plan also discusses efforts to enhance heat.gov (the nation’s central portal for heat and health information), host heat safety social media campaigns, and co-develop infographics, workshops, and other communication outputs. These efforts can ultimately bring greater awareness to the risks of extreme heat and support communities in their heat resilience efforts.

Satellite observations provide information about the Earth that can be critical to building situational awareness and filling in data gaps during disaster response. The Earth Science Division at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a Disasters Program which aims to advance Earth science data and information to support management decisions that prevent or mitigate the impacts of disasters. In support of this goal, NASA’s Disaster Response Coordination System (DRCS) manages a One-NASA approach to coordinate and mobilize the Agency’s assets and expertise to provide geospatial information during disasters. The purpose of the DRCS is to advance the utility of Earth observation information for supporting disaster response decision support, build skilled and effective response communities through improved coordination, engagement, and learning, and reduce impacts on lives and livelihoods by empowering communities to respond to disasters more effectively. The DRCS employs a user-centered, activation framework that begins with direct requests from responders and ends with after-action assessments that feed lessons learned and process improvements. This poster will introduce the DRCS model and approach to expanding the use of Earth observations and geospatial information to support disaster response, share use cases for recent event activations, and highlight initial lessons learned.

As climate conditions drive the expansion and intensification of the fire season, exposure to wildfire smoke is becoming more widespread. Wildfire smoke poses significant health risks, especially for vulnerable populations like the elderly, children, and those with pre-existing cardiovascular or respiratory conditions. The spatial and temporal dynamics of wildfire smoke make it especially difficult to perceive and comprehend; smoke may range from very mild to extreme in both coverage and duration, and damage from smoke does not necessarily correlate with visible factors. Because of these dynamics, it is vital to understand how people perceive both the risks associated with wildfire smoke and their ability to respond. This poster will present findings of a literature review of wildfire smoke risk perception and behavior, with particular focus on (a) individual responses to wildfire smoke, (b) smoke information and risk communication, and (c) risk perceptions of smoke. Our review suggests that most attention in the literature has been focused on capturing the experience and behavior of people in response to smoke with relatively less work exploring psychological and sociological factors underpinning those responses. As the literature for smoke is limited, we also explore research on other stressors that—like smoke—have spatial and temporal dimensions that make them difficult to perceive and respond to. Our poster concludes by charting a course for future research. Understanding individual perceptions and responses is essential for formulating, implementing, and assessing the efficacy of public health interventions, communication strategies, and policies aiming to protect health and foster resilience within communities.

Natural hazard events generate tremendous amounts of debris that negatively impact communities. Many disaster debris prediction models used in practice currently exhibit significant inaccuracies due to their generality and inherent uncertainty. Studies have yet to use unsupervised algorithms for investigating the mechanisms influencing flood debris quantities across a region, which would help guide flood debris models. This poster describes a study using a hybrid unsupervised and supervised machine learning approach for understanding the drivers of flood debris quantities. It uses post-disaster waste data acquired in Beaumont, TX, after widespread flooding from Hurricane Harvey. To analyze this data, we performed K-means clustering to categorize debris tonnage per census block into high, medium, and low clusters. Then we used statistical testing to reveal relationships between flood waste and its drivers. Next we developed a Random Forest (RF) classification model to demonstrate a method for predicting flood debris and to evaluate relative variable importance in model construction. Results revealed that blocks with the largest debris amounts generally had greater flood depths, higher wetland areas, and newer, more expensive homes. Blocks with the least debris had higher first-floor elevations. The RF model achieved an accuracy of 71.1% on a blind test set and relative variable importance in the model was analyzed. We compared the clustered data to Hazus estimates, which showed that the latter’s estimates were significantly higher in most census blocks. A hybrid machine learning approach can provide a good first step towards reducing uncertainty in predicting disaster debris. First-floor elevation emerged as a significant driver but is not currently considered in prediction models. 

The intricacies of post-disaster recovery processes continue to confound planners and policymakers, impeding the development of effective recovery policies. The interplay of numerous factors across varying temporal and spatial scales, compounded by uncertainty and data limitations, exacerbates the challenge. In response, recovery modelling has emerged as a promising approach to inform decision-making amidst complexity and uncertainty, particularly where policy changes entail significant costs and risks. Serving as an experimental tool, recovery models facilitate the exploration of processes and mechanisms, as well as the testing of policy interventions and their potential outcomes. This has contributed to the growth in recovery modelling-based studies in recent years.

However, given the nascent stage of this field, it is imperative to delineate the research questions that should steer future recovery modelling endeavors to enhance their utility in recovery planning. Specifically, there is a need to re-establish the following: what are recovery models for; who they are for; and which specific recovery processes do they address. This poster describes a literature review that addressed these fundamental questions by constructing a typology for existing recovery modelling research and evaluating the breadth of current literature. The poster also identifies the needs of the recovery planning community and discerns the addressed and unaddressed research questions within these categories. The review aimed to steer future inquiries toward yielding actionable insights for policy formulation and problem-solving in the realm of disaster recovery.

Post-secondary students need education and training for understanding and addressing complex problems in their future careers, such as climate change and flooding. However, there are limited curricular opportunities to gain skills in working together to address such problems in a low-stakes setting. A growing body of research shows that the gamification of complex socio-environmental problems can create safe spaces for stakeholders to explore diverse views in a low-pressure environment. The number of serious games focused on climate change is rapidly increasing. The Flood Resilience Challenge serious game (for education and entertainment) was developed by a disaster and environmental sociologist with a hydrotechnical engineer. Players take on the roles of stakeholders (e.g., mayor, land developer) who make decisions to plan for, and respond to, different types of flooding. Players experience the real-life challenges of addressing flooding issues in the fictional Town of Hydrason due to differences in stakeholders’ perspectives and values, limited finances and time, inequities in power dynamics, and various types of floods. The Flood Resilience Challenge game has been tested in university classrooms and in communities and was found to be effective in increasing flood literacy, fostering social learning, and creating safe spaces for exploring risk management and communication strategies. Players also gain a greater understanding of governance and equity issues. Our poster will describe the game and these research findings in more detail and suggest ways that the game can be incorporated into courses across a range of disciplines, especially those that focus on complex socio-environmental problems or experiential educational activities.

In August 2022, the Pearl River in Mississippi flooded and caused damage to the water treatment plant that serves Jackson, MS. Jackson residents are familiar with water insecurity as there has been an ongoing water crisis for decades. The temporary closure of the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant brought national attention and, with it, an influx of funding and donations. This poster describes a case study of Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) involved in disaster preparedness and response in Jackson.  Data collection included 16 semi-structured qualitative interviews with CBO representatives conducted between September 2023 and February 2024. All participants held a department director or CEO position within a CBO. Numerous representatives shared their organization's experiences responding to additional disasters spanning as far back as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and as recent as the winter freeze of January 2024. The position that many Jackson CBOs occupy is undoubtedly unique and, therefore, makes them excellent contributors to learn and understand community-based disaster preparedness and response.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an opportunity for disaster science researchers to gain insight into the underlying nature of community resilience through comparing the socioeconomic effects of government action to a common threat across urban population centers of varying economic compositions. For example, the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment related to public health mitigation efforts in the leisure and hospitality sector of Las Vegas, NV, during the onset of the pandemic were well publicized. In comparison, other population centers of similar size but with different economic sector composition varied in the degree to which employment were affected, and in their trajectories of economic adaptation and recovery. Local economic development agencies currently use strategies designed to increase regional economic specialization to promote economic growth, however, evidence from disaster science research shows that the promotion of economic specialization over diversification may create vulnerability. This poster describes a study using Shannon’s Entropy as a calculated measure of diversity in regional economic industry sector composition, to quantify economic resilience through the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to employment. This study is intended to inform regional economic development organizations in building economic disaster resilience through alternative approaches to the use of existing policy tools, and to inform future research into what industry mix is most likely to promote economic disaster resilience, and how different industry sectors interact and connect an urban center to the global economic system.

Residents of Health Zone One in Jacksonville, Florida, experience spatial inequalities in housing, food access, health, and employment. This poster describes a project using Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods to address these inequalities and the disaster vulnerability that they produce. The PAR approach has enabled effective community engagement and built new perspectives for both the local community and scholars. In this poster, we tell the story from the researchers’ side, exploring how PAR has impacted the perspectives of undergraduates and scholars involved in the research project. Through qualitative surveys of lab members, we investigate instances where PAR has led to meaningful insights and outcomes, as well as shifts in understanding of community dynamics and disaster risk. We analyze responses using reflexive and thematic approaches which illuminate trends in researchers’ impressions. The qualitative surveys reveal significant developments in understanding and practice throughout our project. Lab members share anecdotes of community interactions and reflections on how their understandings have changed since the project started in December 2022. The surveys reveal the extent to which PAR has opened doors for engagement with the community, fostered new perspectives on the role of researchers and revealed a more authentic picture of the dynamics shaping disaster vulnerability in the community. PAR has facilitated deeper engagement with the community, fostering bilateral trust between the lab and local residents. Lab members’ experiences highlight how PAR has led to transformative insights and outcomes, enriching the quality and depth of our research findings, and strengthening social capital in the process.

Understanding the warning dissemination process and how people interpret or react to warning information is critical for local emergency management agencies to develop and practice emergency management strategies. Even though much research advanced this topic over the last few decades, dramatic changes in information exchange such as the increasing use of the Internet, the emergence of social media, and ideological polarization, have challenged research findings based on old information channels and cultures. Nowadays, people’s protective action decisions are impacted by people living hundreds of miles away, including some ideological influencers. This dynamic critically challenges and increases the complexity of risk communication for emergency managers. Thus, there is a critical need to update and advance our understanding of informal risk communication channels. This study utilizes questionnaires to gather perspectives and experiences regarding both official and informal warning information from local emergency management agency representatives and householders residing or working in hurricane-prone areas, aiming to enhance our comprehension of the risk communication and decision-making processes among both local emergency management agencies and the general public through the analysis of their perceptions, interpretations, and responses. This study underscores the challenge of ensuring accurate and timely warning information dissemination through informal risk communication channels. Emergency management agencies need to develop strategies that engage these channels to enhance the reach and credibility of warning information, guiding the public to evacuate promptly and minimize losses.

Japan is one of the most natural hazard-prone countries. It also has some of the most corporate assets in the world. More than 90% of Japanese companies are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); these businesses generate approximately 70% of the nation’s jobs. Japan’s SMEs, however, have not made significant strides toward creating business continuity plans, making them particularly vulnerable to a disaster. SMEs lack resources and workforce needed to develop business continuity efforts. In addition, many SMEs lack knowledge of business continuity strategies. This poster is based on research investigating what business continuity strategies can work better for SMEs and what requirements are needed to employ the strategies. The overall aim of the study is to identify the most effective business continuity strategies. The results will be used to develop a web-based tool for SMEs that they can use to develop their own business continuity strategies.

This poster describes a study assessing the misclassification of patients in hospitals in Taiwan over a period of nine years during mass casualty incidents (MCIs) triage. We identified 1,097 MCIs spanning nine types of disasters, which resulted in 39,468 emergency room-admitted injuries. We assessed patients’ emergency severity and resource utilization using the emergency room’s five-level triage system, which assigns triage levels 1 and 2 to severe cases, discharging non-severe cases on the same day. We focus on hospitalization and outcome tracking. We found misclassification rates of 63.6% across 9 disaster categories, with higher misclassification rates in earthquakes (60.9%) and tropical cyclones (69.7%) compared to traffic accidents (45.7%) and fires or explosions (52.1%). MCI scale and emergency medical personnel misclassified non-serious patients as triage levels 1 and 2 correlated. Misclassification rates were higher for large-scale fire and explosion incidents with more than 41 people, which could be attributed to the surge of patients overwhelming emergency rooms. Misclassification rates for earthquakes and tropical cyclones appeared dependent on incident characteristics such as location, magnitude, and impact period. The study highlights the limitations of current triage methods during MCIs and emphasizes the need for more effective predictors to optimize resource allocation. Misclassification can increase morbidity and mortality, so efforts should be made to develop an emergency incident risk stratification system, possibly through a machine learning model using past MCI records. Efforts should also be made to understand misclassification in the United States through similar types of research.

Earthquakes pose significant threats to people and physical infrastructure. Recent developments of regional earthquake warning systems (e.g., ShakeAlert) have revealed a gap in research about the impacts of earthquakes on moving vehicles and drivers. This poster describes research that integrated earthquake shaking data, crowdsourced Waze navigation application data, and police crash reports to quantify the changes in the likelihood of crashes during seismic events. The study focuses on earthquakes with at least magnitude 4.0 within the contiguous United States between 2017 and 2023 to align with Waze data availability. An average of the Modified Mercalli Intensity measure of shaking from the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) ShakeMap raster data product is applied over constant road network geographies across the affected areas. These links are then geographically matched with accident and other road hazard reports generated by users of the Waze navigation application. Police crash reports from state agencies are also matched to earthquake-affected road segments. This geographic matching analysis produces a database of over 50 million road network segments that were impacted by the 412 earthquakes. Statistical analysis is used to compare the crash and hazard frequencies after earthquakes to similar time periods throughout the previous year, considering factors such as shaking intensity, roadway types, and crash severity. The findings from this research can inform earthquake early warning alerting strategies, specifically the geographic extent of earthquake warnings. The results may also be used to inform public investment in earthquake emergency response planning, or to predict travel delay times from accidents related to seismic activity.

Severe weather outlooks alert audiences about forecasted high-impact severe weather events several days in advance. These longer-term forecasts can allow people to plan for severe weather in ways that differ from the hour- or day-long windows of warnings and watches. Outlook products, however, can be complex to visualize, as they depict complex information, including multiple weather phenomena across multiple days with multiple levels of uncertainty at large regional scales. In this poster, we present results of a survey (n= 417) that explores how visual elements of severe weather outlook design affect the way that people understand this complex content. The between-group study design uses a hypothetical scenario with the New Zealand MetService Severe Weather Outlook to compare how different visual variables affect comprehension, inferences, and intended decision-making. We find that the way the outlooks’ time window, forecast area, icons, and uncertainty are visualized can influence how people understand outlooks and make planning decisions regarding severe weather. For example, composite-style outlooks that depict multiple days of weather on one map may lead to biased perceptions of the forecast compared to outlooks that show each day separately. We discuss how these influences may impact communication and action and present several evidence-based considerations for effective outlook forecast design. We then address how the findings have been used to inform the design of the NZ MetService Severe Weather Outlook.

Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) alerts can give many people valuable seconds to take protective action, such as drop, cover, and hold on, before earthquake shaking starts. In order for individuals to take protective action, they need to receive the alert, understand the alert message, and have enough contextual knowledge to take appropriate protective action. Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH+) people do not have equitable access to earthquake information, warning systems, training, and participation in disaster decision-making at all levels. Despite international policies for emergency alerts to be accessible to people with disabilities, there are no research publications that specifically address the effectiveness of EEW alerts for DHH+ communities. Missed notifications and misunderstandings about elements of the EEW alert message can delay the response time of DHH+ persons. Furthermore, unequal access to earthquake drills and preparedness information can leave DHH+ persons with insufficient context to take protective action when receiving alerts. The existing gaps in effectiveness of the EEW alerts stem from language inequities for DHH+ persons in our schools, workplaces, and families, which we analyze by applying linguistic anthropological and sociolinguistic frameworks to examine the nexus of DHH+ communities’ languages and EEW messaging. To advance language equity in EEW alerting, inclusion of DHH+ communities can improve messaging and reduce misunderstandings so that DHH+ persons can quickly take protective action when they receive an alert.

The poster highlights projects and research from the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute (HVRI) at the University of South Carolina from 2023-2024. This year, HVRI has been engaged in multiple projects in South Carolina as well as different regions of the United States. Highlights on the poster include descriptions of our ongoing and completed projects, outreach and engagement activities, and student research accomplishments. Topics will include the following: (a) our partnership with the National Weather Service (Columbia, SC forecast office) and other state agencies to advance heat warnings to underserved populations and understand their heat risk perception, (b) our use of NASA remotely sensed data to assess wildfire exposure in the Eastern United States, (c) our  engagement in a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team led by the University of Idaho to assess how rural communities perceive and experience heat hazards and climate change, (d) our customization of an actionable resilience index for the South Carolina Office of Resilience to map and track state resilience priorities, and (e)  our ongoing work assessing hazard losses over time and Food Bank capacities.

Current literature suggests immigrants are understudied in disaster research. As one of the many socially vulnerable populations, immigrants are often disproportionately impacted during disasters. However, Immigrants are often only considered within the large heterogenous group of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States and therefore not all concerns of immigrants are considered. This classification also leads to a gap in literature, as immigrants may have different concerns and challenges than other groups when preparing for or recovering from a disaster. Generally, research on immigrants is centered on only refugees, excluding the other subgroups of immigrants. This poster describes a study with the two main hypotheses: (1) Immigrants have unique experiences and disaster impacts compared to the broader aggregated category of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, and (2) There is variation in disaster experiences and impacts across different types of immigrant subgroups beyond just refugees. A literature review across six databases from 2018 to 2023 captured 18 articles focused on immigrant experiences during disasters. Four major cross-cutting themes were identified: legal status, excessive economic burden, limited informational resources, and infrastructural inadequacies. Though some of the identified themes relate to racial and ethnic minority populations, the fear of deportation, restrictive immigration status, and selective disaster relief measures appear specific to immigrants. Studying immigrants' distinct disaster experiences can inform more equitable, tailored, and effective disaster management efforts that address their specific vulnerabilities. Ultimately, additional research elucidating differences across immigrant subgroups will allow for more targeted policies and practices to enhance resilience in these marginalized communities.

In the aftermath of large natural disasters, many affected individuals and households rely on public funding for housing recovery. Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Individual Assistance (IA) is one such critical program. The IA sub-program, Individual and Households Program (IHP), provides repair, replacement, rental, and other needs assistance for eligible owner- and renter-occupied households. Through the OpenFEMA data sharing program, FEMA has made various IHP datasets publicly available. In this poster, we describe research examining all IHP funding for 2017 Hurricane Harvey in Texas. Specifically, we use the OpenFEMA Individual and Households Program—Large Disasters dataset which provides micro-level household-applicant data, spatially identifiable to the Census block. We also integrate data from a variety of sources to identify hazard exposure and physical and social vulnerabilities including disaster declared areas, flood inundation, wind swaths, storm track, and demographic and socioeconomic data. We develop a series of models—both Census Tract aggregated and at the applicant-level—to capture the process through hazard exposure, hazard impacts, application for assistance, damage inspection, eligibility determination, and funding allocation. Findings from this analysis will (a) help to identify any procedural inequities in the application process, (b) inform specifications of future models including more events represented in OpenFEMA data, and (c) be integrated into a community resilience assessment and planning computational environment.

Traditional earthquake engineering risk assessments to estimate building damage tend to focus on understanding natural and physical mechanisms, such as the seismic hazard or structural characteristics of buildings. However, building damage is expected to be related to additional factors, related to land use policy or socio-economic status within the affected communities. This poster describes work studying how seismic hazard, building, and socio-economic characteristics associated with pre-earthquake vulnerability relate to multiple earthquake outcomes, including damage. We will examine the 2015 Nepal earthquake and its impact on the built environment and communities on a regional level. Seismic hazard characteristics comprise geological data, referring to information about the Earth's structure and composition; geophysical data, involving the physical properties of the Earth such as shear wave velocity used for characterizing local site conditions; geotechnical data, including mechanical properties of subsurface materials; ground deformation data, entailing measurements of surface changes, such as landslides, soil liquefaction, and lateral spreading; and ground motion parameters, such as peak ground acceleration, velocity, and displacement, which are crucial for seismic hazard characterization. Building characteristics include structural material and number of floors. Socio-economic characteristics include poverty rates, population demographics, and land use. Our assessment statistically integrates these diverse data sources to reveal how not only seismic hazard and building characteristics contribute to physical outcomes from an earthquake, but also pre-existing vulnerabilities. Our findings contribute to future research and policy by providing a pathway for improving seismic hazard assessment through a more multi-dimensional perspective on earthquake risk.

As new risks such as climate change and pandemics continue to emerge, contemporary society is increasingly defined as a risk society, threatening individuals’ desires for safety. It is anticipated that the inability to ensure safety will have negative implications for individual life satisfaction. This poster describes our study which proposed the environmental characteristic of community resilience as a novel factor influencing life satisfaction. Utilizing personal factors, social capital factors, disaster perception, and community resilience in local communities, we aimed to analyze factors influencing life satisfaction among citizens of Busan Metropolitan City in 2020. To measure community resilience, we developed a Disaster Resilience Index, comprising resistance, recovery, and transformation, further divided into social, economic, infrastructural, and institutional resilience, based on 60 selected variables derived from five measurement variables. Using the developed Disaster Resilience Index, we employed multilevel modeling to analyze its impact on life satisfaction. The results indicate that higher levels of community disaster resilience positively influence individual life satisfaction. Consequently, this study underscores the significance of disaster resilience in not only disaster management but also its positive impact on individual life satisfaction. This sheds light on the importance of disaster resilience-related policies from a new perspective.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses faced unprecedented challenges as shutdowns threatened their viability. National, state, and local governments responded with several initiatives, such as providing loans or easing taxation to support struggling businesses. This poster describes a research project—named Business Recovery through Innovative Disaster Response and Governmental policy Efforts (BRIDGE)—investigates the role of government policies in facilitating business recovery. We focus on assessing how policies promoted equity, sustainability, and resilience. Our aim is to examine the effectiveness of these policies and suggest possible improvements to the government response that could be implemented in future climate-related disasters. Conducted across 15 diverse cities worldwide, the research employs a comprehensive methodology, integrating qualitative interviews, quantitative data analysis, and policy evaluations in various phases of the research. One focus region is Charleston, South Carolina, which, being a tourist destination, suffered a severe blow to the hospitality sector. We interviewed government officials who were responsible for supporting local businesses. The purpose of the interviews was to understand: (a) the impact of challenges faced by local businesses, (b) policies implemented during the pandemic to help businesses recover, and (c) future implications and spillover effects of these policies. The findings of these interviews provide valuable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and others involved in economic development and recovery efforts. By understanding the diverse needs and challenges faced by businesses in various global contexts, policymakers can design more targeted and inclusive strategies to support business recovery while advancing broader societal goals of equity, sustainability, and resilience in the post-pandemic era.

The Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic Prosperity and Resilience Hub (CHEER), a research collaboration between eleven universities, is a multi-disciplinary project that takes place over five years. This poster describes preliminary findings from recent interviews with representatives from CHEER community partner organizations in North Carolina and Texas about their work to address household needs in the context of hazards and disasters. These local organizations have provided aid to residents and worked to build community resilience following multiple disaster events, including winter storms, coastal flooding, and hurricanes. We conducted qualitative interviews with representatives from seven community partners in Texas and North Carolina. Interview topics covered a wide scope of issues related to recovery, community stability, disaster fatigue, and resiliency. This poster will highlight the major themes that have emerged from the preliminary data collection, including our community partners' unique struggles and strengths, as well as organizational barriers to recovery that they share. In the poster, we will bring forth the narratives and lived experiences of community partners engaged in critical disaster recovery work at the local level, emphasizing the need for tailored and widely applicable solutions to recovery and mitigation in areas most affected by hazards and disasters.

The University of Central Florida’s (UCF) Emergency Management Research Initiative (EMRI) is focused on informing decision-makers about increasing hazard impacts on vulnerable populations and housing. We are working with local, regional, state, and federal partners on several projects that address hazard threats, information platforms, and understanding continued inequitable impacts and recoveries from disasters. These include the following: (a) The New First Line of Defense: An overview of www.hazardaware.org and its constituent parts; (b) Pinpointing Disaster Recovery Outcome for Renters: Understanding the outcomes for renters when they “go missing, are lost, or are ignored” during the disaster recovery process and exploring solutions; (c) Supporting Risk Based and Actionable Mitigation Planning:  Building an empirical understanding of threats, vulnerabilities, and severity on consequences to support regional mitigation choices; (d) Building an Orlando Resilience HUB: Supporting GIS and informational needs for a mobile resilience HUB; (e) Clean, Affordable, and Resilient Energy Systems (CARES) for Socially Vulnerable and At-Risk Communities: Building a transdisciplinary approach for understanding the intersection of climate risk, energy burden, and social vulnerability to mitigate future power outages; (f) Impact Assessment and Support of CDBG-DR Action Planning: Supporting state and local community recovery from disasters through quasi-automated and empirically based impact assessments; (g) Perishable Flood Data Collection along Florida’s New Forgotten Coast: Exploring the results of high-water mark data collection in Cape Coral Florida following hurricane Ian (2022); and (h) Equity Assessments across the Disaster Spectrum:  A look at how impact measurement and financial support for disaster recovery varies across space and by social characteristics.

Incarcerated individuals, particularly women, face heightened vulnerabilities during disasters, yet their perspectives often go unheard in both research and media narratives. This poster describes a study focusing on the evacuation experiences of incarcerated women, addressing significant gaps in the literature and data. In-person focus groups with formerly incarcerated women across Texas revealed their unique vulnerabilities and marginalization during disasters. Co-developed by leadership from the Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance (JIWA) and researchers from Texas A&M University, this study was designed to center the experiences of stigmatized and vulnerable populations, empowering them in the research process and informing community-based research practices. The study highlights the mental health impacts and needs among currently and formerly incarcerated women, offering valuable insights to shape public health and emergency management policies. Ultimately, our findings serve as a call to action to build more resilient and inclusive communities that support the needs of all individuals, particularly those who are often overlooked.

The United States experienced more than 20 "billion-dollar" disasters in 2023. But costs are just one of the many problems facing communities reeling from wildfires, severe storms, droughts, and other serious natural hazard incidents. As the United States experiences more large disasters more frequently, it is increasingly important that policymakers, emergency managers, and communities understand the best ways to prepare for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of such events. Building on almost 50 years of relevant work, RAND launched the Disaster Management and Resilience Program (DMR) in 2022 to undertake research that offers a holistic approach to disaster management and response. DMR studies apply RAND's cross-disciplinary approach to examine a broad array of natural disasters—including fires, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and pandemics. The program focuses on helping federal, state, and local stakeholders address a wide range of disaster-related concerns, such as cost analysis and evaluation, program assessment and process improvement, workforce planning, training and education, risk assessment, flood insurance, mitigation and recovery planning and implementation, and equity considerations across the emergency management lifecycle. Recent studies include an evaluation of the risk assessments that FEMA requires for recipients of certain preparedness, mitigation, and recovery grants and an initial methodology to assess the social equity performance of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities hazard mitigation grant program. More information is available at https://www.rand.org/hsrd/programs/disaster-management-and-resilience.html.

How have structural engineers characterized the performance of older buildings following earthquakes? Many professional engineering associations organize post-disaster reconnaissance efforts to assess and record damage patterns. These missions’ goals include discerning whether affected buildings require demolition and distilling “lessons” to prepare for future hazards. Given these aims, the conclusions that these teams draw and disseminate in their reports can perpetuate particular perceptions about buildings. In turn, widespread associations of a construction type with certain qualities can form stereotypes about it, despite reconnaissance missions providing an inherently limited perspective of a given disaster’s effects. This poster will present findings from a textual analysis of the reconnaissance reports published by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI). EERI has coordinated and published reports for reconnaissance missions since the 1970s. Taking this corpus of reports as a dataset, this research uses textual analysis methods to understand which terms occur together most frequently within these reports, to test what qualities have been most associated with “historical” or “old” construction. This analysis indicates the frequency of phrasing that sets up direct contrasts between modern, engineered, code-compliant structures and old, non-engineered structures as separate categories, despite the oversimplification of such a distinction. Questioning whether these reports might be influenced by preexisting assumptions about older buildings urges a reconsideration of how professionals undertake post-disaster reconnaissance. This call to reexamine underlying preconceptions is also relevant following different hazard types, especially as the climate crisis increases the severity of future events.

Disasters can disproportionately impact vulnerable and marginalized groups and aggravate existing forms of inequality and oppression. Refugees, displaced by conflict and persecution, simultaneously have social vulnerabilities that create additional challenges in the face of natural hazards and resilience in the face of risk. The ability of refugees to learn about hazard risks in their new host states and adapt their behaviors following resettlement is critical to their mental and physical well-being and economic mobility. With limited research focusing on the changing nature of risk among refugees and its implications on hazard awareness and disaster preparedness, we examine how perceptions of risk among refugee populations shift following their resettlement in the host country. This poster describes a study focusing on Ukrainian refugees who recently resettled in the Seattle metropolitan area, which is home to the largest percentage of Ukrainian refugees displaced by the Russian invasion in February 2022 in the United States. We use surveys and interviews to understand how refugees perceive risk in their previous locations and where they are newly settled. This study will inform how local, state, and federal agencies and non-governmental organizations working in refugee resettlement develop disaster preparedness assistance programs for this vulnerable population.

Global warming presents unparalleled challenges, marked by record-breaking heatwaves, devastating floods, and wildfires. There is an urgent need for a sustainable, resilient future. This poster emphasizes the critical transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and water, highlighting the importance of energy storage and grid reliability. It showcases Denmark and Bhutan as exemplars of successful energy transition and carbon neutrality. Moreover, it discusses the potential of emerging technologies—such as floating solar panels and high-altitude wind power—in combating climate change. Advocating for a societal shift towards sustainable consumption and equitable climate policies, the poster underscores the collective effort required to foster a sustainable economy. The urgency of mobilizing resources, ingenuity, and determination globally to confront climate challenges is clear. The time for action is now.

The Department of Landscape Architecture, Disaster Resilience, and Emergency Management (LADREM) at North Dakota State University partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Region VIII (FEMA R8) Office to develop an interdisciplinary capstone course to address complex problems experienced by practitioners in the Region. FEMA R8 identified specific work groups experiencing challenges and developed seven problem statements. LADREM faculty created an interdisciplinary course and recruited 28 advanced students to research and create potential solutions to each problem through problem-based and team-based pedagogies. Each student team included students from Landscape Architecture and Disaster Resilience and Emergency Management. Several teams included students from other majors including Sociology, Communications, Political Science, and Public Policy.

Each team worked with a unique problem that was sponsored by a FEMA R8 divisional office and had one to two FEMA R8 staff members serving as liaisons with their assigned team. The problems that teams worked on addressed challenges specific to the region. Including a focus on equitable approaches to providing support to rural and isolated communities. The faculty provided academic support and pedagogical guidance as students conducted interviews with professionals and impacted community members. The teams used a process of problem contextualization, ideation, war-gaming, and recommendation. From those activities, students created empirically supported recommendations for addressing each problem. Recommendations included policy feedback, practical tools, and suggested strategies for equity and inclusion. Student recommendations were presented to problem sponsors and other FEMA and university officers at the conclusion of the course.

Manufactured housing provides affordable housing for over 7,000 households in Vermont. There has been growing awareness in the state about the social vulnerability of people living in manufactured housing communities after recent severe flooding events—including Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and the Great Vermont Flood of 2023—, and newly adopted environmental justice. This poster presents the process, key findings, and lessons learned from an assessment project that integrated geospatial analysis and community engagement with residents in manufactured housing communities. Of the state’s 238 manufactured housing communities, 66 were found to have at least some portion of their property within a Federal Emergency Management Agency– (FEMA)-mapped flood hazard area. Thirty-five had lot locations within FEMA-mapped flood hazards areas. Additional flood hazard data, including river corridor and dam inundation data were also analyzed to provide a more comprehensive understanding of flood risk to these communities. The results of the geospatial analysis were then used to select three communities to participate in community engagement workshops that featured the mapping results to foster conversations about flood risk. Residents raised many concerns about flooding and their communities, including social vulnerabilities to flooding, cost of flood insurance, lack of information about previous flooding events, flood risk perceptions, and questions about what can be done to mitigate flood risks. Key findings are shared from response and recovery efforts to the Great Vermont Flood of 2023, which impacted five MHCs, destroying over 40 homes in these communities. Outcomes from this assessment process can inform policy and enhance future response, recovery, and resilience planning efforts for these unique communities in Vermont and beyond.

Drought is a prominent concern for water resource managers throughout the world, and development of forecast tools to provide early warning of drought occurrence is a high priority for society. The Colorado River Basin (CRB) in the United States has been the focus of significant scientific and public attention recently due to sustained drought conditions and the ongoing megadrought. To assist both water users and water resource managers in the CRB, the U.S. Geological Survey Drought Program is working to characterize and predict streamflow drought—defined as abnormally low streamflow. Streamflow drought is a significant and recurring challenge for water resource management. Work at regional and national scales is focused on developing data-driven methods to advance early warning capability for streamflow drought onset, duration, and severity. In this poster, we highlight the process of developing machine learning-based models to predict and forecast streamflow drought within the CRB region. Our modeling approaches predict streamflow drought for multiple intensity levels using drought thresholds that vary by day of the year. Model output is displayed using a prototype web-based dashboard that enables visualizing the model forecasts at streamgage locations as well as locations along rivers where forecast products do not currently exist. In addition to model development, this project includes a focus on exploring innovative visualization tools to improve understanding of how streamflow drought manifests at a given location. We created and released publicly accessible websites that communicate “what is streamflow drought” and explore five impactful historical drought events across the United States.

Waste management in disaster response and recovery helps avoid secondary environmental and human health problems. Debris removal, however, is logistically complex and costly. Our poster describes social processes that affect disaster waste and debris management ( decision-making in the United States.  Through ethnographic research with practitioners in the field, we sought to ask who is involved and how do they make decisions across disaster phases. Our research revealed insights about two key moments in the disaster waste and debris management process: Pre-incident preparedness planning and post-incident operational planning. We identified continuities and ruptures in the disaster waste management process across these stages. The practitioners in our study—echoing the research literature—said that planning processes generally support emergency response. They also described the planning documents themselves, however, as having limited usefulness. These views seem contradictory: The practitioners said the planning process was helpful but felt the plan documents were not useful. What explains this contradiction? Our ethnographic work revealed that the relationships that practitioners built during the planning process are what they valued. It provided them with more consistent benefits during the operational planning and response phases than the plan documents alone. In our poster, we discuss practices that support relationship building and other beneficial social processes involved in both phases. Recommendations include ensuring that waste managers are involved in tabletop exercises and plan creation, establishing contracts, identifying waste staging, and routinizing recycling and reuse practices. Practitioners also emphasized the importance of post-incident operations planning as a critical space for evaluating and adjusting plans to suit the specific requirements of each incident. Practitioners and emergency responders can utilize these findings to improve current disaster waste and debris management practices.

One of the busiest seaports in the United States is found southeast of Houston, Texas. Communities along this 52-mile waterway, such as Super Neighborhood 65 (also known as Manchester), are highly exposed to natural and anthropogenic hazards. They are also surrounded by chemical and petroleum refineries, railroad yards, recycling facilities, and other industries that handle hazardous chemicals. Manchester is home to over 3,000 residents. It is predominantly Hispanic (88%) and substantial proportion of households have incomes under $25,000 (46%). As chemical and petroleum industries expand into communities, the desire to understand its impacts on the environment and health has become a priority. Communities like Manchester seek to address the environmental injustices experienced due to the inequity, disparities, and proximity to industry. This poster will do the following: First, it will compile our current and ongoing research documenting heavy metals and petrochemicals within this community. Second, it will discuss community engagement practices and approaches. And third, it will describe and discuss solutions by including community members in a Citizen Science program.

This poster describes a study investigating the multifaceted recovery process occurring in and around Redding, CA, following the Carr Fire, through a comparative analysis between the reconstruction of the built environment and the community's social and cultural recovery. The study will employ a mixed methods approach, integrating a quantitative analysis through a remote sensing assessment of the built environment recovery, alongside qualitative analysis to capture the diverse community perceptions of recovery post-Carr Fire. Purposive and snowball sampling will be employed to ensure a broad representation of impacted stakeholders, including residents, local business owners, emergency responders, and members of non-governmental organizations. Quantitative data will be collected through remotely sensed imagery. Qualitative data will be collected through semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and cognitive mapping exercises. A thematic analysis will identify recurring themes and insights into the recovery process, with a focus on understanding the disparities in recovery perceptions among different stakeholders. This research not only seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of the recovery dynamics in and around Redding, but also aims to contribute to the broader discourse on disaster recovery and resilience, highlighting the importance of integrating both physical and socio-cultural dimensions in post-disaster recovery efforts. 

Proactive and equitable planning for natural hazards is vital as hazard events, regardless of magnitude, can cause mass harm to people and their livelihoods. To aid hazard management decision-making and reduce impacts, organizations can utilize tools such as a social vulnerability index (SVI), developed to quantify vulnerabilities to ensure that those with inherent social inequities are accounted for. However, SVI construction has various approaches, introducing epistemic uncertainty that propagates throughout the index, influencing results and decisions. Despite progress in internal validation, spatial-centered components remain understudied with conflicting perspectives. This poster describes research addressing these gaps, internally validating two widely used SVIs—Center for Disease Control SVI (CDC SVI) and Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute SVI (HVRI SoVI®). Across three model structures, hierarchical with z-score ranking, hierarchical with percentile ranking, and inductive principal component analysis, we perform an uncertainty and sensitivity analysis investigating the impact of the spatial scale selection (block group and tract), geographic boundaries delineations (state, coastal, and city), and indicator sets (CDC SVI and HVRI SoVI®) on SVI ranks. The uncertainty analysis found the inductive model less robust and precise than hierarchical models. The sensitivity analysis revealed the selection of indicators as the primary source of variability across all model structures. Spatially, the inductive model exhibited more variability in geographical boundary selection than spatial scale compared to the hierarchical models—previously not considered as relevant for index construction. These results underscore the importance of carefully approaching SVI construction and implementation, particularly for fostering equity-minded decision-making for hazard management

This poster presents an exploratory analysis of how gendered divisions of household labor influence the timing of daily travel. Studying individual trips from the 2022 U.S. Department of Transportation National Household Travel Survey, we investigate if gendered household labor might lead to differences in heat exposure by analyzing travel behavior during hours of the day that are typically the hottest. A Mixed Effects Model was employed to observe if trips conducted during the potential hottest hours of the day are more likely to be undertaken by men versus women, while considering the effects of household type and purpose of each trip. Our findings show that overall women travel more during potential high heat hours. Men are more likely to travel during these hours for work related purposes whereas women are more likely to travel for household-related tasks. The composition of adults in the households had no significant effect, however women are significantly more likely to make trips during high heat hours when a child is present in the household. This analysis observes travel behaviors that potentially arise from intrahousehold negotiations. This observation lays the groundwork for future studies to assess how such household bargaining dynamics might evolve in response to extreme heat. For example, future research might explore how households negotiate employment and household duties to mitigate heat exposure risks for household members. Understanding how households adapt to heatwaves, or barriers to household adaptation, can help develop policies to safeguard a broader segment of the population against the health risks associated with high temperatures.

Pakistan is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and is considered one of the countries most affected by natural hazards. In 2022, a monsoon season deposited ten times the typical precipitation, resulting in the worst flood in the country’s history. Socially vulnerable populations, particularly those living in flood-prone areas, are at a higher risk of experiencing the negative impacts of floods due to their socio-economic characteristics. This poster describes research to identify the important social characteristics and the spatial distribution of vulnerable residents. The study constructed a social vulnerability index (SoVI) for 135 districts of four provinces of Pakistan. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of 19 indicators of social vulnerability resulted in four factors explaining 72% of the total variance: socioeconomic status, employment and education, minority and household composition, and housing conditions. A satellite-detected flood extent map of August 2022 was overlaid on the social vulnerability map to identify areas of high flood exposure and social vulnerability. Overall, the most vulnerable study units were located in the Sindh and Baluchistan provinces in the south of Pakistan. Sindh province is highly prone to flooding, with the districts in the region being particularly vulnerable. Most of the less vulnerable districts are located in the Punjab province. Identifying vulnerable districts in Pakistan can help policymakers effectively target flood mitigation strategies.

The Cascadia Coastlines and Peoples Hazards Research Hub (Cascadia CoPes Hub) comprises an interdisciplinary team of researchers funded by the National Science Foundation. Their primary objective is to enhance understanding of natural hazards and climate change risks faced by coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest, including Washington, Oregon, and Northern California, bolstering their resilience through community-engaged research initiatives. This poster spotlights the Hub's Cascadia Community-Engaged Research Clearinghouse (CCERC), which provides a pathway to link community leaders and practitioners with Hub resources and services. Its overarching goal is to increase local capacities to mitigate and adapt to impacts from hazards, disasters, and climate change. Moreover, it aims to address community information needs and facilitate local problem-solving through convergence research, evaluation, technical assistance, and research translation. Using two examples of CCERC requests—the susceptibility to Tsunami Inundation and Landslide Hazards of the City of Yachat’s Community Disasters Caches Location, and the implications of sea-level rise for Oregon’s estuaries—this poster outlines CCERC’s operational framework. It delineates the process from inviting community leaders and practitioners to submit collaboration or support requests, to determining appropriate Hub mechanisms for support, connecting communities with appropriate Hub researchers, and providing ad-hoc technical support on community-engaged research design or implementation.

Despite the abundance of hurricane evacuation studies published in the past two decades, two critical issues persist in this domain. First, existing models often amalgamate multiple factors into new scales to streamline dimensions. The transferability of these conceptual scales across studies remains unclear. Additionally, many studies tend to overemphasize generalizing their findings to broader contexts, disregarding the unique contextual circumstances of each case. To address these shortcomings, this poster describes a study of 294 households in Lee County, Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. The study conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to test the fitness of factor combinations proposed by previous studies. Subsequently, the study investigated respondents’ evacuation decisions and behaviors, particularly in light of a late evacuation order issued less than 24 hours before the hurricane's landfall, which exacerbated concerns about time pressure and high uncertainties. The results elucidate disparities in information seeking and evacuation timing among different risk areas compared to previous research on hurricane evacuation. Furthermore, employing structural equation models, this study optimized the interconnections among physical, behavioral, and psychological variables outlined by the traditional Protective Action Decision Model. The findings offer valuable insights for local emergency managers to refine their warning protocols and emergency response operations. Additionally, local authorities are encouraged to revise their evacuation plans to accommodate more complex scenarios. By providing insights tailored to the specific context of Hurricane Ian, this study offers practical implications for enhancing evacuation strategies and responses to future hurricanes.

New capabilities to model community resilience developed over recent years have now made it possible to model community-level damage due to a hazard event and the recovery trajectory of the building stock in the months and years after this event. The Center of Excellence for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning (CoE) has begun to provide analyses that simulate damage to the built environment across a user-defined region due to various hazard events, including floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes. This asset-level damage is chained with other models to simulate the socio-economic impact of the event as well as the anticipated repair times for various elements of the built environment. These simulations are run using the Interdependent Networked Community Resilience Modelling Environment (IN-CORE). The outputs must be validated for a range of implementation contexts and communities to ensure the analyses housed in IN-CORE possess sufficient generalizability and fidelity. To this end, the CoE is conducting a longitudinal study of a series of communities impacted to varying degrees by a tornado outbreak in December of 2021 to inform and validate building damage and repair models in IN-CORE. The results of this work should lead to a more nuanced and contextualized understanding of how the same event can have varied long-term impacts on communities with different social characteristics. This longitudinal study is still underway, capturing recovery data for three years following the event.

Rain-wind induced vibrations have been a significant concern in the field of bridge engineering due to the potential fatigue and durability issues associated with large-amplitude vibrations. Therefore, it is essential to thoroughly investigate this type of vibration. To date, numerous theoretical and experimental studies have been conducted on rain-wind-induced vibrations. Existing research suggests that rain-wind induced vibrations exhibit two degrees of freedom, and the vibration trajectory in a single mode forms an ellipse. Despite the existing body of research, a notable gap persists in the form of a mathematical model for rain-wind induced vibrations with two degrees of freedom. This poster describes my research which aims to address this gap by employing coupled Van der Pol oscillators to simulate rain-wind-induced stay cable vibrations. Additionally, the Unscented Kalman Filter will be utilized for the identification of aerodynamic damping coefficients. The results demonstrate that the Unscented Kalman Filter accurately determines the aerodynamic damping coefficients, while the coupled Van der Pol oscillators effectively simulate rain-wind-induced vibrations. These results contribute to an enhanced understanding of rain-wind-induced stay cable vibration, enabling us to take measures to mitigate the impact of such vibrations. This, in turn, facilitates improvements in the safety of cable-stayed bridges and other structures with similar configurations.

The Noto Peninsula earthquake disaster on January 1, 2024, particularly affected regions in Japan with high older adult populations. Individuals with disabilities or requiring care, who typically relied on local resources and welfare services for their daily living, were unable to evacuate to shelters for various reasons and remained at home, unable to voice their needs for assistance. To connect these hidden vulnerable individuals with appropriate support, professional organizations, such as social work organizations working with people with disabilities, collaborated with local governments. These collaborations included using government-generated lists of people with disabilities or in need of care; the professional organization then conducted emergency assessments to evaluate the urgent need to provide support for these individuals. This poster aims to analyze the difficulties and problems encountered during the implementation of these assessments by specialized professionals, such as social workers, and their integration with systems linked to resident registration. The research methods included participant observation of social workers’ activities and interviews. The analysis focuses mainly on problem awareness and communication discrepancies between frontline social workers and the prefectural authorities managing the system.

The number of older adults living alone in Japan is a serious social issue that must be considered in disaster risk assessments and preparedness plans. In Japan, older adults over age 65 constitute nearly 30% of the entire population and the number of older adults living alone, which is already high, is expected to continue rising in the decades to come. This poster describes research aiming to develop monitoring robots for older adults who live alone. The robots are designed to provide older adults with disaster prevention assistance to ensure that they do not become stranded in the event of a disaster. The research methodology involves the inductive extraction of information on when and how evacuation orders should be given to older adults living alone during disasters using the small robot "Sota®" with communication capabilities empowered by generative AI. The study methodology involves field surveys conducted in Fukuchiyama City, Kyoto, which has been struck by multiple disasters in recent history. The results of the research show a high potential for robots to aid in protecting older adults who live alone during disasters.

Hurricanes are increasing in frequency and intensity, with ensuing environmental destruction imposing short- and long-term impacts on communities. In recent years, people in eastern North Carolina have experienced major hurricanes and floods, resulting in damage to homes and communities, and disruption to livelihoods. Research has demonstrated job insecurity is linked to poorer health and depressive symptoms, but less is known about how extreme weather events disrupt work and the potential impact on health outcomes. This poster describes research using data from the Dynamics of Extreme Events, People, and Places survey, a household survey conducted across five sites in eastern North Carolina, to assess hurricane-related disruptions to work and impacts on well-being among individuals differentially exposed to and impacted by Hurricane Dorian (September 2019). Descriptive analyses were conducted to examine work disruptions across fiscal quarters in the year following Dorian. A quasi-Poisson model was used to examine the relationship between work disruptions and post-traumatic stress reactivity (PTSR), additionally adjusting for demographic characteristics, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other factors associated with post-hurricane well-being. Results showed hurricane-related work disruptions to be most prevalent in Ocracoke, the site most damaged by Dorian, with 42.3% of these respondents not working any hours and 37.0% transitioning out of the labor market in the quarter following Dorian, and 56.8% having decreased earnings compared to the previous year. Across all sites, we observed a 50% increase in PTSR (Rate Ratio = 1.5, 95% CI: 0.62, 4.09) in respondents whose earnings decreased in the quarter following Hurricane Dorian.

Disaster research is often highly event driven. For the field to progress, it is crucial that those new to this area of study have access to already existing research and an understanding of various methodological approaches and potential ethical challenges. In recognition of this, the CONVERGE facility at the Natural Hazards Center has developed 12 free online modules to train hazards and disaster researchers and practitioners. This poster highlights the modules and details user background characteristics of more than 10,000 registrants. The CONVERGE Training Modules—which are funded are by National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Geological Survey—address foundational topics such as Institutional Review Board procedures, emotionally challenging research, and perishable data collection, as well as more advanced subjects like broader ethical considerations, reciprocity, and Indigenous sovereignty. Each module features learning objectives, lesson plans, case studies, and an annotated bibliography. A list of sample activities is provided through the CONVERGE Assignment Bank. Users who successfully complete the quiz at the end of the module receive a certificate, which is worth one contact hour of general management training through the International Association of Emergency Managers certification program. Registration data indicate that 78% of registrants are undergraduate or graduate students, 68% self-identify as emerging researchers or practitioners, and roughly 25% are affiliated with the social sciences. All users, and especially those from groups underrepresented in the sciences and engineering, show significant gains in knowledge, skills, and attitudes after completing the modules.

"Fire service culture" discourages responders struggling with stress from showing weakness and seeking help, contributing to their struggles. These issues can lead to staffing issues and a shortage of recruits in many areas. This poster describes an NSF-sponsored project that examines numerous coping strategies and the mental health outcomes of fire service responders and how they vary across departments, stations, and shifts. This project tests a multilevel model of the masculinity contest culture that emphasizes competition, risk, and hiding weaknesses. Through stratified random sampling, we collect data from employees of fire departments that vary by size, region, and type across the nation. Preliminary data suggest that masculinity contest culture at the team level interacts with individual coping strategies to moderate the effects of stressors on emotional states and ultimately mental health (e.g., suicidal ideation) and job outcomes (e.g., job withdrawal). The findings can help connect organizational interventions, interpersonal communication, and job stressors.

Data visualizations, such as COVID-19 case monitoring dashboards or the “cone of uncertainty” indicating uncertainty of estimated hurricane paths, play a pivotal role in disaster preparedness, response, and adaptation. Despite their importance in disaster risk management, relevant training is often overlooked and underdeveloped in educational programs for researchers and professionals in this field This poster describes the Risk and Resilience DAT/Artathon, a free virtual workshop that offers early-career participants the opportunity to collectively share skills and develop individual visualization projects over three weeks. Through four years of hosting the DAT/Artathon with 46 participants from 11 countries and 13 disciplines, this community has co-developed a set of essential skills for disaster data visualization, encompassing everything from understanding user needs to designing for accessibility. The workshop format has also yielded tangible outcomes, including visualizations that have facilitated interdisciplinary communication and collaboration between academia and practice. In summary, our research underscores the significance of data visualization and storytelling in risk communication and proposes recommendations to incorporate visualization modules into existing curricula, conferences, and other online training modules.

Local emergency management agencies’ broad mandate and responsibilities to mitigate, prepare, respond, and recover from disaster events necessitates strong institutional capacities with sustainable funding, especially in the most hazard-prone and vulnerable jurisdictions. Recent federal executive orders have prioritized greater equity within the federal government and the Federal Emergency Management Agency identified equity as a foundational pillar in their 2022-2026 Strategic Plan. However, disasters occur at the local level and demand greater scrutiny of the challenges faced by emergency management at the local level. State and local agencies have depended on the federal government to fund a significant proportion of their basic staffing and key resource funding. This poster describes an investigation of the distributive equity of the most disseminated grant, the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG). The Commonwealth of Virginia serves as a case study, and EMPG data for 2020 to 2022 was analyzed for correlations with social vulnerability, community resilience, previous disaster losses, and the National Risk Index. The Virginia Department of Emergency Management is currently allocating EMPG funding by population size, but our findings show that allocation method is inequitable. Funding disproportionately goes to counties with less social vulnerability, higher community resilience, and lower previous disaster losses. Therefore, the current allocation method is detrimental to building local emergency management across the Commonwealth of Virginia. The authors recommend that the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and other states consider distributive equity and utilize a targeted approach to allocating and distributing EMPG that accounts for social vulnerability, community resilience, and previous disaster losses.

Natural hazards recurringly leave staggering effects on the U.S. economy, especially in the coastal regions. Hurricane Maria in 2017 resulted in numerous fatalities in Puerto Rico and inflicted billions of dollars in damage. As most studies analyze Puerto Rico’s economic shock and recovery from Hurricane Maria on a macro level, variation in loss and recovery from the micro-economic aspects remain understudied. This poster describes research analyzing household-level economic and financial indicators to quantify how households cope with and recover from economic shocks caused by natural hazards. Using a combination of household survey, census, and geospatial datasets, we conduct a longitudinal study to explain the change in household income and consumption in three distinct time intervals between 2017 and 2020. Employing a Difference in Difference (DID) approach, we estimate how household characteristics and experience of Hurricane Maria affect household economic vulnerability and resilience. Our findings suggest that, unlike most hazards, support from close social networks did not contribute to recovery among households affected by Hurricane Maria. We expect the results will be useful in understanding the nature and extent of vulnerability in promoting resilience in disaster-prone regions.

Resilience is an important aspect of building performance, and various efforts have been made to reduce downtime during disasters, such as implementing base isolation and preparing backup generators for blackouts. There have been several proposals aimed at evaluating the resilience performance of buildings, with a specific focus on downtime. These evaluations target the short-term impacts on recovery immediately following a disaster. However, there is the possibility that buildings may experience multiple earthquakes during their lifetime. We would like to expand the present resilience index concept to the lifetime resilience of buildings. In our poster, we propose that the lifetime resilience performance of a building should be assessed by examining the relationship between the actual usable floor area throughout its lifetime to the planned available floor area. This assessment involves breaking down the building's resilience performance into components such as planning and maintenance, structural elements, non-structural components, and facilities. Moreover, each component is evaluated from the perspectives of aging, damage from hazards, and recovery capacity.

Tornados are one of the most devasting natural hazards in the United States claiming many human lives and causing tremendous loss of properties annually. The substantial damage makes it vital for civil engineers to understand the disaster to build resilient structures that can withstand it. This poster describes research addressing the imperative need to understand the reliability of tornado pressure specifications to ensure robust structural designs against extreme wind events. The study is conducting a comparative analysis of tornado pressures. More specifically, it performed an evaluation of the reliability of ASCE 7-22 code specifications during the Matador tornado event. The primary objective was to assess and compare the reliability of tornado pressure data between the industry standard ASCE 7-22 code and the actual Matador tornado value. By analyzing variations in tornado pressures, the study identified discrepancies and assessed the implications for structural design and resilience. Monte Carlo simulations were used to quantify the probability of exceedance for tornado pressures from both sources, allowing for a comprehensive evaluation of their reliability. The results highlight variations in tornado pressures between ASCE 7-22 and Matador, providing insights into the reliability of code-specified pressures.

The 2021 National Landslide Preparedness Act directs the United States Department of the Interior to identify and understand hazards and societal risks posed by landslides across the country. However, a consistent and nationwide understanding of the societal risk posed by landslides does not exist. This poster describes our work to fill this gap by characterizing exposure to landslides across the country using gridded 90-meter resolution landslide susceptibility and population models. The susceptibility model describes where landslides are more and less likely to occur. The LandScan population models estimate the number of people in a particular area. Results reveal regional variations in population exposure, such as the disparity in both the total number of people and the proportion of populations exposed to landslides in different regions. In California, for example, more than eight million people are exposed to landslides, but this number comprises less than 30% of the total population of the state. In contrast, in West Virginia and Puerto Rico, fewer than two million people are exposed in each state or territory, but the proportion of people at risk ranges from 45% to greater than 60%. This example illustrates the utility of a consistent and nationwide understanding of landslide exposure. Decision-makers, for example, can use exposure information to inform resource allocation for landslide risk-reduction efforts (e.g., targeted risk communication). Additionally, the information can guide more detailed geologic and demographic investigations in regions where significant societal impacts from landslide events are likely.

The rising number of historic disasters supercharged by climate change has coincided with a steep decline in local journalism employment. As more communities are facing emergencies, fewer reporters are working to share lifesaving information about preparation, response, recovery, and solutions. The Local News Go Bag project is a platform for local news outlets and media that are seeking to develop best practices for serving communities, particularly historically marginalized audiences, during disasters and emergencies, as part of the local information ecosystem. The poster describes a project based on research conducted by Kate B. Maxwell, publisher and founder of independent local news outlet The Mendocino Voice, as part of a Reynolds Journalism Institute Innovation Fellowship in 2023-24. It includes numerous interviews with experienced local journalists and publishers reporting on disasters and related topics, including editorial, operational, and financial needs. The platform is an expanding resource providing tools, strategies, and community for journalists and media before, during, and after emergencies, particularly for smaller outlets and independent journalists in the United States in high-risk and rural areas. The guide provides tools to help local media serve as interpreters, prioritize essential information needs, and emphasizes a community-centered and collaborative approach between media, emergency officials, researchers, and community organizations. The News Go Bag project will serve as an ongoing venue for dialogue, advocacy, training, and resources, and is seeking partnerships in related fields to expand this work.

As disaster management continues to seek greater convergence and community-based practices, this research offers insights into the challenges involved in participatory and collaborative mitigation processes. Applying a case study of multi-stakeholder processes to change code regarding unreinforced masonry in Portland, Oregon, this poster describes research seeking to understand how emotional and material connections to places do or do not influence processes and outcomes. Previous collaborative planning scholarship has proven that processes are challenged by negotiating across diverse interests and positions. This study is unique in that it seeks to add evidence of the ways in which mitigation processes are challenged by emotional claims to place. The research investigates whether and how policy code changes impact stakeholders’ sense of place, as well as the extent to which relationships to place impact deliberation and outcomes. The research asks two central questions: (1.) How do committee members and building owners express their sense of place? And (2.) To what extent and in what ways did these perspectives and emotional connections influence the mitigation policy process and outcomes? Drawing from the lessons learned from up to 40 semi-structured stakeholder interviews, this research will offer guidance on how decision-making processes can better integrate and honor the emotional implications that mitigation has for property owners with smaller portfolios (five or fewer commercial properties) or who live in and own their commercial property. Findings will be transferable to other mitigation processes involving people being most directly impacted by mitigation policies.

As the geographic reach of Next Generation TV continues to grow, so do the opportunities for emergency alerting. The unique capabilities included in NextGen TV, such as customizable programing, geotargeted information, and break-in and wake-up alerts, offer the first chance for alert innovation via television since the standardization of the Emergency Alert System in the 1990s. Local hazard and action information will soon be customizable from local officials and broadcasters. Our objective is to determine how best to present alerts to ensure ease of human information processing. There is little research examining how viewers understand and interpret TV alert and warning information. Local networks typically rely on “crawls” to display warning information with county warning map graphics, while national weather-focused networks include much more than warning information. Research on human information processing in noisy environments has determined that there may be a limit to how much information consumers can process, especially when needing to make quick decisions under conditions of threat. This poster will show early findings from experimental research on the impact of screen design on visual attention. Participants were asked to view televised alerts and warnings about fictitious hazard events and make decisions about their safety. We used eye-tracking and qualitative interviews to examine how they processed visual information about alerts and warnings. We focused on screen elements that affected their viewing speed and ability to accurately process the information that they were viewing and make decisions about their safety. Using a research-based and user-focused design, we provide NextGen TV consumers with relevant information in an easy-to-use format that facilitates decision-making.

The Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission was established in 2021 by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to develop recommendations across the wildfire system. In September 2023, the Commission released a report to Congress that recommended an effort to identify research gaps and science priorities documented in existing reports. In support of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Science and Technology Policy Institute analyzed existing science and technology gaps and priority areas described in seven reports focused on wildfire management published between 2014 and 2023. Six areas of common gaps and priorities emerged: detection and monitoring, firefighter operations and safety, land and fuels management, construction and zoning, health and safety, and relief and recovery. The analysis revealed seven cross-cutting priority areas for improvement across the research, development, and application of science and technology for wildfire risk mitigation: education; interagency and cross-sector coordination; practitioner-informed science and technology; data management; research leadership; information at appropriate scales; and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Taken together, these gaps will help inform federal agency prioritization of wildfire-related science and technology issues by highlighting ongoing challenges and opportunities for collaboration and improved resilience.

Understanding the dynamics of tornados is essential to mitigate their devastating impacts in the United States. This poster describes a study filling gaps in tornado research by analyzing full-scale measurements of dust devil vortices, which are similar to tornados. Field data from three dust devils captured in New Mexico are presented. The experimental setup included a bluff body, anemometers, and a grid of pressure sensors. Analysis of the data shows pressure drops up to 300 Pa, peak wind speeds reaching approximately 19 m/s, and notable changes in wind speed and direction. The study presents dust devils as proxies for tornados due to their frequent occurrence and ease of measurement. The findings contribute to a better understanding of tornado vortices and their associated loading, which is crucial to enhancing the resilience of buildings and infrastructure against tornado-induced disasters.

Our objective is to fearlessly explore the impacts of disaster on underserved and/or overlooked populations, often communities rich in diversity. We need members of these communities to inform planning regarding their unique needs—cultural, religious, and informational. Recognizing that planning teams must be representative of their communities, including every demographic and access and functional needs consideration, we will investigate how best to ensure this representation. This poster will present an examination of the integrated spaces of disaster planning, how to turn underrepresentation into unified representation, and offer strategies regarding how we can enhance inclusive disaster planning practices. We will consider resources, capacity, and trends to inclusive disaster planning, and explore creative approaches to outreach efforts. We will examine how communities’ voices and stories help us to be better prepared to meet whole community needs and communicate effectively with them about risks and resources. Each story is unique and each voice telling it can provide the insight needed to successfully plan for each unique need.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) introduced Risk Rating 2.0 (RR2), a groundbreaking risk-based premium framework, to revolutionize flood insurance pricing. RR2 was rolled out between October 2021 for new policies and April 2022 for existing policies. RR2 was designed to be able to integrate diverse geographic, building, and policy attributes needed to tailor risk premiums more accurately. By incorporating factors like proximity to water bodies and building characteristics, FEMA aimed to offer fair and personalized insurance rates. This poster describes a review of the intricate mechanisms of RR2 through exploratory data analysis and visualization of FEMA's rating factors. The analysis underscores the pivotal role that factors such as distance from flood sources and building elevation relative to the neighborhood in premium estimation. Additionally, it reveals the nuanced impacts of building attributes like foundation type and first-floor elevation from the ground on risk assessment. Moreover, the study highlights the efficacy of individual and community-level flood mitigation efforts in reducing insurance premiums. Measures such as elevating first-floor height and participating in the Community Rating System yield substantial discounts, incentivizing proactive risk management. The insights provided in this study serve as a vital resource for homeowners, community developers, and government agencies, fostering a deeper comprehension of RR2's influence on flood insurance premiums. Empowered with this knowledge, stakeholders can make informed decisions to mitigate risks effectively and bolster resilience against flood-related perils. The phased implementation, culminating in full adoption on April 1, 2023, underscores FEMA's commitment to enhancing the integrity and inclusivity of flood insurance pricing.

Winter storms inflict significant disruptions on both society and the economy, often leading to injuries and fatalities across the United States. Despite the presence of energy-efficient technologies and design strategies that offer resilience benefits for buildings, the current condition of homes in Louisiana underscores enduring limitations. This poster describes research that endeavors to confront these challenges by advocating for energy-efficient, resilient, and healthy housing throughout the state. The research initiative is comprehensive, concentrating on generating innovative solutions while rigorously addressing critical questions concerning material selection, practices, and the assessment of benefits and costs in retrofitting endeavors. This includes conducting a Life-Cycle Benefit-Cost Analysis to evaluate the cost, energy savings, and effectiveness of resilience enhancement in building upgrade measures, tailored for both new constructions and retrofits in Louisiana. Furthermore, the research aims to bolster extension capabilities and ensure the execution of impactful education and outreach strategies supported by scientific data. This encompasses conducting a statewide community-engaged education and outreach campaign with a specific emphasis on promoting equity through adult and youth education and training programs, outreach projects, youth energy-efficiency curriculum development, 4-H volunteer and club leader training, Extension publications, and industry resources, with a particular focus on underserved communities. By addressing strategies aimed at improving the health, well-being, and safety of individuals impacted by winter storms and extreme heat events, these endeavors aim to facilitate the adoption of more effective weather-preparedness techniques and provide education on available resources for weather preparedness

Floods are common and costly in the United States; investing in flood mitigation reduces future flood losses and decreases the burden of post-disaster response and recovery. However, disaster mitigation actions are costly and require adequate, effective, reliable, and equitable funding sources. In the United States, a considerable proportion of flood mitigation programs are funded by federal agencies. While the availability of flood mitigation programs has increased before and after disasters, there are few systematic analyses of how these investments are distributed across different community types. Addressing distributive equity in public flood mitigation funding is one way to ensure that individuals, regardless of their socioeconomic status, can improve their living standards. In this poster, we address this gap with a quantitative analysis of funding distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA), Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) program to counties in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico coastal states from 2000 to 2020. By analyzing twenty years of HMA data, we highlight the factors accounting for disparities in FEMA’s flood mitigation investments and shed light on patterns in the distribution of the agency’s disaster mitigation funds across counties.

In disaster risk reduction, risk is often expressed as a probability or formula output by scientists and practitioners. However, this is not how lay people perceive risk. Personal experience, feelings, and culture influence our perceptions more than scientific knowledge. Because of this, lay people do not always perceive and respond to risk in the way practitioners want or expect, and vice versa. Giving people more scientific information about risk does not change their risk perception much. Instead, working with citizens is key to understanding their risk perceptions and associated preparedness and response actions. Dialogue and co-creation are essential to helping us understand how to communicate risk in a way that is salient and meaningful to people. A lack of dialogue between citizens and practitioners can result in a series of gaps in disaster risk reduction, linked to communication, governance, operation, implementation, and data, as well as a gap between theory and practice. Our European project, the Integrating Risk Perception and Action to enhance Civil protection-Citizen interaction (RiskPACC), has developed several tools to facilitate this: digital, face-to-face, and paper-based. It is underpinned by a conceptual and methodological framework for developing risk communication processes and tools through co-creation. This framework centers on the need for practitioners and lay people to develop constructive relationships around risk reduction, develop a shared understanding of the local context, discuss how they see risk, and what they expect from each other. Its goal is to facilitate risk communication that closes the gaps between risk perception and action.

HeatReady addresses the complexities of extreme heat while prioritizing community resilience and equity. This poster describes three HeatReady Initiatives: HeatReady Schools, HeatReady Neighborhoods, and HeatReady Cities, HeatReady Schools, established in 2017, serve as crucial community hubs, focusing on student, educator, and family well-being by formalizing and enhancing school heat preparedness. By studying perceptions, reactions, and mitigation strategies during heat emergencies, this initiative aims to establish guidelines for safer learning environments. HeatReady Neighborhoods collaborate with community groups, citizens, and organizations to utilize neighborhood assets effectively in addressing extreme heat challenges. By optimizing the "heat resource shed," interventions are tailored to meet community needs, particularly in areas disproportionately affected by inequities. HeatReady Cities, spearheaded by Phoenix's Office of Heat Response and Mitigation (OHRM), lead comprehensive efforts to combat urban heat. The OHRM coordinates year-round programs and policies to lower urban temperatures and protect public health, working with various entities to track trends, collect data, and share innovative solutions.

These initiatives highlight the importance of preparedness, response, and collaboration in mitigating health risks associated with extreme heat. Through community engagement, policy implementation, and data-driven strategies, the aim is to build resilience and promote equity in addressing escalating heat-related challenges.

Post-disaster infrastructure disruptions affect people differently. This poster describes a study of the factors associated with the public's prioritization of six hypothetical recovery rules. Based on over 1,000 survey responses from Houston, Washington, D.C., Miami, and New York, binary logit models were developed for two rules. The first model was based on the rule “those who pay the most should get power and transport back first” (representing an inequitable plan) being ranked last (least preferred). The model had five variables with negative effects: the number of children, having a portable generator, having a whole house battery backup, the number of days they work from home, and living in a condominium. The four variables that had positive effects were gender (female), race (white), ethnicity (not Hispanic), and the number of household vehicles. The second model was based on the rule “first restoring power and transport to essential services” being ranked first. Since this rule is aligned with current practice, it was the control. The model for the current practice showed that the number of children, having a whole house battery backup, and the number of days someone works from home had negative effects. The four variables with a positive effect were race (white), ethnicity (not Hispanic), household income, and the number of household vehicles. The number of household vehicles had a statistically significant role in both models; individuals with a greater number of household vehicles were statistically more likely to rank the priorities more equitably.

Wildfires are a growing threat in the United States with devastating social, ecological, and public health impacts. Prescribed burning can be an effective management technique to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires as their impacts grow in the nation and world. Despite potential benefits, prescribed burning remains challenging to implement and faces public scrutiny in some areas, due in part to its own risks, including smoke exposure and escaped fire. Making decisions about prescribed burning as a wildfire mitigation practice requires making informed tradeoffs between these risks and the risks associated with unplanned wildfires. Understanding these “risk-risk tradeoffs” is critical to shaping risk management policy. This multi-year interdisciplinary research project uses a mixed-methods approach developed by a team of social science, public health, air quality, and mechanical engineering research experts aimed at characterizing prescribed burning impacts and informing prescribed burning decision-making, implementation, policy, and public communication in Colorado. The project’s first major qualitative research activity was a November 2022 stakeholder workshop with 43 participants with practical, community, or research expertise in prescribed burning or wildfire topics in Colorado. Attendees completed a cognitive mapping activity in small groups and participated in a facilitated discussion on what they learned from the cognitive mapping activity. After the workshop, 25 participants completed a follow-up survey assessing their priorities for future prescribed burning research and action. This poster shares the methods, findings, and key findings from these formative research activities, including how they will inform the remainder of this multi-year project.

Older adults are vulnerable to disasters, as evidenced by the Great East Japan Earthquake, where 66.1% of mortalities as of March 11, 2015, occurred among individuals aged 60 years and above. This underscores the significance of disaster preparedness for this demographic. This poster describes our research examining the disaster preparedness of older adults living in neighborhoods in Japan. Our study was focused on how older adults discussed disaster preparedness with their neighborhoods in relation to their regular neighborhood interaction. We used cross-sectional survey data from the 2019 Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study, which encompassed 24,353 functionally independent community-dwelling adults aged 65 years or older (response rate: 53.0%) from 64 Japanese municipalities. We analyzed responses from 13,757 participants (6,381 women and 7,376 men) who answered questions about pre-disaster discussions. A logistic regression analysis was conducted with the dependent variable being discussion about disasters (with family or relatives, or neighbors) and the control variables being sex, age, economic status, education, and housing status. Independent variables included living alone, family caregiver or not, and social relations with neighbors. Results indicated that living alone, being a family caregiver, and fostering social relationships with neighbors positively influenced discussions about disasters with neighbors (OR: 2.802, 1.732, and 2.056, respectively). In addition, a multilevel analysis was performed to account for regional differences. These studies provide suggestions for promoting disaster preparedness among community-dwelling older adults.

The increasing frequency of extreme events worldwide highlights the urgent need for coordinated efforts to achieve sustainable recovery and resilience. This poster describes research aiming to assess disaster recovery pathways after extreme flood events using a multidimensional framework. The key research questions addressed in the study were: What are the elements of disaster recovery? What factors act as barriers or facilitators to recovery? How do these factors contribute to "building back better"? The study combined conceptual and empirical insights, including a literature review and an assessment of recent flood recovery in Germany and Nigeria. A multi-methods approach was used, including in-depth stakeholder interviews and policy document analysis. The findings emphasize the crucial role of relief organizations in driving recovery efforts, with a particular focus on humanitarian aspects. Positive changes, such as the implementation of sustainable heating systems and the use of sustainable materials in building reconstruction, have been observed. Additionally, religious organizations have played a vital role in providing social and psychological support during the recovery process. However, the study underscores a lack of concerted efforts to truly "build back better" during the recovery process, primarily due to political, financial, and institutional constraints. These themes have been explored within the broader scope of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. The study provides a comprehensive assessment of disaster recovery pathways, identifying key elements, barriers, and facilitators. It highlights the need for coordinated, sustainable recovery efforts to enhance resilience in the face of increasing extreme events.

Icons are visual representations of objects, actions, or ideas that can be used to streamline emergency messaging. Icons can act as visual cues that alert people to danger or prompt them to take action. Some researchers have suggested that text-based warnings with icons could increase message accessibility for people with access and functional needs (Natural Hazards Center Report 2024; Trujillo-Falcon et al., 2022). Icons, however, can only reduce accessibility issues as long as they are understood. Several standardization boards have been set up to standardize the structure and colors used in icons, such as the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS. There is no equivalent standardization process, however, for the symbolic representation of the icon itself—which means that there is no consistency in how to visually represent hazards via icons. Furthermore, we lack research that identifies if the public understands what these icons mean. Before we continue to use hazard icons in emergency messaging, we must first assess if they are understood by the public. This poster describes an effort to achieve this goal. We conducted a short survey with Amazon MTurk participants about 27 icons from the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS collection; these 27 icons have also been recommended by the Department of Homeland Security. Participants were randomly assigned to view three different icons and asked to describe what each icon meant to them. The poster will discuss notable differences in their interpretation of each icon and future suggestions for their use in warning communication.

Improving flood preparedness at the local level and flood early warning systems are huge challenges in Japan. This poster describes the creation of the Flood Response Desktop Drill, an effort developed in the disaster-prone Kumamoto Prefecture to enhance the preparedness of local governmental officers. The interdisciplinary study team organized by the University of Tokyo and Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) developed a novel approach for creating the drill by ensuring that drill scenarios were evidence-based. To do so, the team used precipitation data from previous events and Kikikuru, a web-based real-time risk maps of landslides, inundation, and floods due to heavy rain, operated by JMA since 2017. Kikikuru shows 1-km lattice-mesh risk levels in Japan based on the radar/rain gauge analyzed precipitation (R/A) data at 1-km level. Notably, Kikikuru contains statistical data about the relationship between rainfall and topography for the past 30 years of rainfall events in Japan. We used precipitation data from a 2017 severe flood induced by heavy rain and had Kikikuru produce risk maps fitting the local context. This study is the first to report how novel evidence-based scenarios can be used to inform local government staff and practitioners and increase awareness of high-risk events. The drill scenario approach discussed in the poster has wide applicability that could be extended to desktop drills for other local municipalities and evacuation exercise at neighborhood level.

This poster summarizes work from the National Science Foundation-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) network. SSEER was formed, in part, to respond to the need for more specific information about the size, status, and expertise of the social science hazards and disaster research workforce. SSEER serves as the network home for social scientists who study the human, economic, policy, and health dimensions of disasters. As of March 1, 2024, the SSEER network includes 1,654 members globally. This poster highlights key membership characteristics including geographic location, research methods used, disciplinary background, and disasters studied. We encourage those who are interested in learning more to visit our website to access annual SSEER Census reports, SSEER data publications, and the SSEER interactive map (see: https://converge.colorado.edu/research-networks/sseer/). The results of this work have implications for training, mentoring, and workforce development initiatives geared toward ensuring that a diverse next generation of social science researchers is prepared to study the root causes and social consequences of disasters.

Climate change is fueling an increase in the severity and frequency of extreme heat events worldwide. It is critically important to have clear and effective heat messages that help the public—including heat vulnerable populations—protect themselves. As a key public safety organization, the National Weather Service (NWS) issues heat advisories, excessive heat watches, and excessive heat warnings that notify the public of impending extreme heat conditions. We argue that these types of information are and contain jargon—or specialized terms that have meaning to experts but may not be readily understood by the public. Jargon may negatively impact the public’s ability to understand the message understanding and take protective action. However, we do not know how members of the public understand and interpret heat jargon. Nor do we know how the public interprets impact and vulnerability information. This poster describes a study designed to fill this gap in knowledge about how members of the public interpret NWS heat information. Specifically, the poster will share results of 16 focus groups that we conducted in 16 metropolitan regions in the continental United States that are demographically and climatologically diverse. We will offer comparisons between the heat jargon and new plain language definitions concerning the threats and impacts of extreme heat. We will also discuss how changes in messaging may benefit those who are sensitive to extreme heat.

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic changed everyday life around the globe, public libraries supported their users far beyond what is commonly understood as their central “business model”, the access to information and literacy. Libraries have increasingly been recognized as essential support systems for their patrons, with sociologists, public health scholars, and disaster researchers alike highlighting their contributions to the wellbeing of the people they serve. Even more recently, scholars from different fields have started to investigate the public library as social infrastructure that has significant impact on disaster outcomes. This poster describes a research project investigating the contributions to the pandemic response made by libraries in Delaware and how their trusted place in their communities enabled them to adapt their services to their patrons’ changing needs. I conducted 31 interviews between August 2023 and January 2024 as part of dissertation research. The interviews provide insight into the experience of employees of the Delaware public library system during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviewees range from part-time support staff to the State Librarian, with different levels of experience and responsibility, as well as significant variation in personal attitudes towards the pandemic. What they all have in common is intimate knowledge of their community and a clear view of the need for their services to not only continue but to be expanded in the face of the complete disruption of life as we knew it in March 2020. This poster presents early results from the qualitative study currently underway.

The increasing frequency and intensity of disasters worldwide necessitate a new approach to evaluating disaster resilience for decision-makers, practitioners, and communities themselves. In the United States, policymakers elevated resilience building as a key strategic and operational goal for U.S. national security. A comprehensive resilience assessment plays a vital role in helping stakeholders understand risk profiles, implement efficient mitigation strategies with limited resources, and ultimately help communities recover with the future in mind. A framework for assessing holistic rural community resilience, however, does not appear to exist. We reviewed 36 resilience frameworks in literature, and none could be adequately adapted to rural contexts. In this poster, we describe our proposal to adapt the City Resilience Index (CRI) to rural contexts. The CRI was developed through the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program, which includes a customized and simplified resilience assessment and strategy-building framework. The poster describes our research into developing a refined and customized approach for holistic resilience assessment in rural contexts, with a special focus on disaster resilience and implementation plans. We will assess the answers to the following research questions through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with community stakeholders: First, what changes and adaptations are necessary to update the CRI and create a customizable approach for rural communities? And second, what engagement strategies are most effective at motivating holistic resilience planning and collaborative action? This tailored resilience assessment can bridge gaps and support rural resilience by aligning with resilience concepts for sustainable rural community development amid growing disaster risks.

This research explores the enduring legacy of redlining on current climate vulnerability, emphasizing the disproportionate impact on communities historically marginalized through discriminatory lending practices. Originating in the 1930s, redlining denied financial services in neighborhoods based on their racial or ethnic composition, leading to decades of infrastructure neglect in affected communities. This poster describes our study which used the Longitudinal Tract Data Base and climate risk assessments from the First Street Foundation to assess how redlining has shaped susceptibility to climate risks today. Our analysis revealed that these redlined areas exhibit increased susceptibility to climate hazards, such as flooding and extreme heat. By integrating demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic data, we assess how redlining has exacerbated climate vulnerability, underscoring the intersection of historical injustice with contemporary environmental challenges. Our findings provide support for a targeted approach in climate adaptation efforts that prioritizes equity to mitigate the compounded risks faced by these communities. This study contributes to the growing discourse on environmental justice, highlighting the need for integrating historical context into climate resilience planning.

A resilience hub promises to bolster community resilience to natural or man-made hazards as well as foster social cohesion during daily life. Transportation networks that efficiently connect communities are essential for the resilience hub to fulfill its functions. Micromobility—an emerging transportation mode with flexibility needed to adapt and cope with dynamic and complex transportation networks —holds the potential to facilitate the hub-community connection and tackle challenges such as distributing emergency supplies and disseminating information. Moreover, micromobility plays a crucial role in enhancing community resilience, given its energy efficiency, environmental friendliness, promotion of social interaction, and contribution to multi-dimensional transportation modes. There is a scarcity of practical applications that situate micromobility, however, within the emergency management domain. To address this gap, this poster describes research employing an agent-based modeling and simulations methodology to explore and examine the potential efficacy and viability of micromobility, specifically bicycles, e-scooters, and e-motorcycles, in risk communication and emergency supplies dissemination. The model selects the City of Stillwater, Oklahoma, as a prototype, assuming that conventional vehicles are unusable due to an impaired road network in the early post-disaster stage. This study aims to enhance our understanding of micromobility's multifaceted functions in the enhancement of community resilience and cohesion, which can be instrumental in guiding future research and practical applications.

Earthquakes are a critical hazard that communities in the United States must consider in their hazard mitigation planning. However, earthquake mitigation is often difficult to prioritize given the relatively low frequency of these events and limited mitigation project funding across the United States. In this context, it can be difficult for earthquake projects to compete against more frequent hazards. One way to help earthquake projects stand out is to emphasize how climate change could increase the impacts felt from future earthquakes. Current Hazard Mitigation Plans (HMPs) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) mitigation funding programs encourage communities to highlight how hazard impacts may change in the future due to climate change. The connections between climate change and earthquakes are not always obvious to stakeholders involved in preparing these documents and proposals. In this poster, we will highlight some of the ways that climate change can affect earthquake impacts, such as liquefaction exposure changes. We will also discuss how these considerations may be incorporated into HMPs and FEMA funding proposals.

Extreme weather events are significant contributors to power grid disruptions across the United States, with a 10-fold increase in power outages between 1984 and 2012. In Florida, hurricane-induced wind is the most frequent cause of severe power outage, followed by intense rainfall and storm surge. For instance, Hurricane Irma resulted in 6.7 million customers without power, nearly two-thirds of all customers in Florida. Modeling weather-related power outages is challenging due to grid quality, vegetation, and weather conditions such as wind and precipitation. Limited granular outage data further complicates the modeling. In this poster, we describe research of weather-outage models based on machine learning algorithms for Orange County in Central Florida as a case study. We tested various models, including Random Forest, Artificial neural networks, and long short-term memory using weather information such as precipitation, wind speed, and hurricane path information as predictors and the duration of power outage as the outcome. Power outage data is available at the county level from 2015 to 2022. Results show that the best model achieves above 80 percent accuracy in identifying diverse types of power outages including no outage, minor outage, and major outage events. In the next step, we aim to incorporate outage data with higher spatial resolution, extend the modelling domain to other counties, and integrate social vulnerability data and grid characteristics into the modeling framework. The goal is to identify hotspots of weather-related outages enabling the development of targeted intervention strategies (e.g., placement of solar and storage) to improve resilience of disadvantaged communities.

Disaster risk communication is a commonly used intervention strategy that aims to disseminate critical information about hazard events in order to motivate preparedness behavior and mitigate the negative effects of disasters. Few studies, however, have experimentally tested the effectiveness of such preparedness messages. Based on an integration of the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) and the Risk Perception Attitude (RPA) framework, this poster describes a pilot study that attempted to experimentally manipulate threat perception, self-efficacy, and collective efficacy through disaster preparedness messages. The study employed a between-subjects experimental design with an overall sample of 186 participants. At Time 1, participants completed perceived threat, self-efficacy, and collective efficacy measures. After one week, participants were randomly assigned to read one of the preparedness messages and then completed the perceived threat, self-efficacy, and collective efficacy measures again. Findings showed that participants who received the high threat message in the experiment reported higher perceived threat than those who received the low threat message. Similarly, individuals in the high self-efficacy message conditions indicated higher levels of self-efficacy than those in the low self-efficacy conditions. There was no difference in collective efficacy for individuals in the high collective efficacy versus the low collective efficacy message conditions. Results will inform the refinement of these preparedness messages, which will be used in a subsequent experiment to examine how the updated messages impact preparedness behavior.

Drought is one of the costliest and deadliest climate-related disasters in the United States and it negatively impacts human health in multiple ways. Individuals in communities affected by drought, for instance, often experience mental and behavioral health issues related to stress. Drought also reduces air quality which, in turn, affects respiratory health and related conditions, especially among vulnerable children, older adults, pregnant people, and those who suffer from respiratory illnesses. Furthermore, drought decreases access to clean and abundant drinking water. And it is associated with periods of extreme heat that endanger the lives and health of vulnerable groups, especially in marginalized communities. As public health departments are responsible for addressing and monitoring these public health issues, it is important for these agencies to be engaged in drought preparedness and response activities. To better integrate with public health on drought issues, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) recently published "Drought and Public Health Roadmap for Advancing Engagement and Preparedness". Our poster will focus on the creation of this document and address opportunities to integrate drought into public health planning. We will also identify communication and outreach tools that can be applied by public health professionals and those responsible for broader natural hazard response planning.

Social vulnerability is an important but hard to measure concept. It was established to better understand the relationship between socioeconomic characteristics and the ways that individuals or communities are able to prepare for, withstand, and recover from one or more hazard events. Within the natural hazards community, social vulnerability indices—which combine multiple characteristics—help decision-makers allocate resources in ways that will reduce disparities in post-hazard outcomes. Within the United States, these indices mostly use U.S. Census data, which provides multi-year and generalizable population estimates for the country. Census data is easily accessible and widely available, making it possible to generate custom social vulnerability indexes that fit the needs of individual communities or projects. Indeed, a multitude of indices exist that are built on a diverse set of indicators, geographic scales, and formulations. Often, the underlying assumptions and limitations inherent in all social vulnerability indices are not explicitly addressed by the modeler or end-user. An understanding of these assumptions and limitations will help improve the validity of these indices within the hazards community. This poster sets out to clearly state basic assumptions that must be considered before generating a social vulnerability index. We explore how these assumptions play out within Southeast Texas, a five-county coastal region with exposure to flooding and air pollution. Our findings highlight the limitations of assumptions and the need for community engagement in identifying socially vulnerable areas.

Puerto Rican communities face long-standing threats of being impacted by floods and hurricanes. On September 18, 2022, Category-1 Hurricane Fiona hit the Southwestern area of Puerto Rico, provoking landslides, unleashing flooding, and obliterating the power grid. This happened nearly five years after Category-5 Hurricane Irma and Category-4 Hurricane Maria caused unprecedented devastation from which the Island had not yet fully recovered. Although mitigation strategies improved during Fiona, significant gaps persist in understanding the perceptions of community members as well as government agencies and non-governmental organizations. This poster presents a qualitative framework to understand how community members and other stakeholders perceive disaster preparedness and recovery challenges in the aftermath of Fiona. The research project included focus-group interviews in communities from Fiona-affected areas of Puerto Rico. The communities were selected based on their socio-vulnerability and challenges in accessing electricity and transportation. We also recruited stakeholders from Federal Emergency Management Agency, local municipalities, and public and non-profit organizations to understand their perspectives on the challenges in mitigation and recovery activities (e.g., restoration timeframe, interdependencies). Following our fieldwork, responses were transcribed, translated, cleaned, and analyzed through content, thematic qualitative analysis, and the results were validated through AI techniques like natural language processing. Our analysis identified gaps in the disaster recovery process. These include a lack of preparedness and coordination during rescue operations, reluctance to adopt alternative power sources, and disorganized urban planning in the hurricane-prone zones. Our analysis also compared and contrasted the perceptions of community members and stakeholders, leading to actionable recommendations for augmenting community resilience.

Every hurricane season, tropical storms and hurricanes threaten the Florida coastline and its residents. Hurricane Michael was the last Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in Florida, resulting in catastrophic damage in the Florida panhandle. Before landfall, Hurricane Michael underwent rapid intensification and intensified from a Category 2 hurricane to a Category 5 major hurricane within 24 hours. Rapid intensification is expected to increase with climate change due to warmer sea surface temperatures, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico. More frequent and intense storms, coupled with continued population growth in coastal regions, threaten to produce more damage and losses for vulnerable populations in the future. This project aims to assess the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) indicators and how well they predict property losses for homeowners post-Hurricane Michael. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was performed using SVI data and Housing Assistance Program Data for owners from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from 2018 at the census tract level. Our regression analysis suggested that the SVI indicators predict total damage values accounting for about 50% of the variance. Unemployment status, education level, and disability status were the most significant social vulnerability indicators when predicting total damage for homeowners. Social vulnerability indices can help stakeholders provide support and mitigation strategies to vulnerable populations. SVI indicators can be useful for understanding the impacts of natural hazards on vulnerable populations, even when the overall index is not a significant predictor.

Social vulnerability is a complex and dynamic concept. Social vulnerability indices represent a heuristic tool to identify places where several socioeconomic factors coincide to exacerbate disaster risks. Since 2006, these indices have been largely based on American Community Survey (ACS) data collected on a rolling basis by the United States Census Bureau. The ACS data, generated from smaller sample sizes than the decennial census, have a high margin of error. No study to date has sought to understand how this uncertainty affects vulnerability rankings and maps. This poster describes research that aims to develop a method for quantifying the uncertainty of the census-based social vulnerability index. The Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) developed by the Centers for Disease Control is widely used in the United States. Using the 2020 version of SVI, we developed a Monte Carlo model using RStudio at the census tract level for FEMA Region-4 that uses the margins of error from the ACS data for each of its 15 indicators and four themes. The generation of SVI margins of error enables further analysis using coefficients of variation to map uncertainty in the SVI. It allows for entropy calculation of the rankings of the census tracts across the Monte Carlo simulations, which can also be analyzed to identify regions where compounded uncertainties may undermine the usefulness of the index as a decision-making tool. This study facilitates a better decision-making tool in all phases of disaster management and public health.

Housing instability is associated with negative impacts on the physical and mental health of adults and children, unemployment, living hardships, homelessness, and the loss of social ties and community engagement. Disasters are one of the main drivers of housing instability due to the increasing demand for housing and the drastic jump in housing prices. This poster describes research investigating the potential impacts of disasters on housing disruptions and community displacement in California. The study sheds light on the correlation between post-wildfire housing affordability and community resilience in the state. It employed a comprehensive spatial regression analysis of data from 2005 to 2018 to understand how wildfire events affect rent affordability in the impacted areas and neighboring counties due to community displacement, focusing on underserved communities. Furthermore, by developing a regression model, we aim to evaluate the efficiency of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) financial assistance in mitigating the effects of wildfire on rent affordability. Our research results convey awareness among stakeholders, policymakers, and the public about post-disaster housing affordability, especially for the most vulnerable populations, to inform recovery policies and strategies. Furthermore, by highlighting disparities, we emphasize the importance of implementing long-term disaster mitigation measures and risk communication that prioritize vulnerable population needs. Ultimately, our findings enhance sustainable and equitable resilience within communities by empowering them with the knowledge and resources needed to address housing instability challenges effectively.

Large magnitude geophysical events are infrequent, and communities’ lack of first-hand experience with related impacts can lessen the perceived importance of mitigation and preparation. Disaster-related video games offer vicarious experiences in which select situations relevant to disaster response and the consequences of decision-making can be explored. But games are not drills; they are rule-based structures affording play—a free, episodic, and transformative activity that presupposes curiosity about both playing by the rules and playing with the rules. This understanding of play may challenge traditional educational approaches to disaster but may resonate with complementary facets of successful disaster response—extensive planning and effective improvisation. Here, we analyze play related to two titles of a commercial Japanese video game series, Disaster Report. We compare the rule structures and mechanics of Disaster Report 1 and 4 and analyze how players perceive their gameplay by looking at a wide range of reviews and play reports of the games. The analysis suggests that the more open, playful approach taken in Disaster Report 1 facilitates a higher degree of experimentation and self-reflection than the more instructional, educationally rich fourth installment of the series. Specifically, players appreciated opportunities to explore diverse survival strategies in Disaster Report 1 and critiqued a perceived lack of player agency in Disaster Report 4. We argue that active, self-driven exploration and experimentation is also an important form of engagement with disasters in games, beyond more obvious and narrower learning-focused objectives.

Extreme heat events are becoming more severe and frequent. Certain populations face disproportionate risks for increased morbidity and mortality, including the elderly, the unhoused, those living in urban heat islands (UHI), and those with chronic conditions. To address research gaps around the socioeconomic and environmental factors influencing heat vulnerability in the southeastern United States, we sought to assess social and health vulnerabilities resulting from climate change and urbanization, with specific interest in UHI effects, in Knox County, TN. We compiled publicly available data from a variety of sources to assess heat vulnerabilities in Knox County and used principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce data. Analyses and visualizations were done in SAS v.9.4 and ArcGIS. Social vulnerability index (SVI) and subthemes of SVI (e.g., socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic minority status; housing type; transportation), health care and preventive care access, disability status, redlining, chronic diseases (e.g., kidney disease, obesity), and overall mental, physical, and general health metrics were represented. Variables associated with UHI effects were included in PCA. Four principal components (PCs) explained 81.94% of total data variation and represented socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, health status, minority status specifically, and structural considerations. Many evidence-based adaptation programs and interventions focus on one aspect of vulnerability, but few incorporate historical context into planning and implementation. This poster describes the results of this investigation and how they demonstrate the complex issues faced by the residents of Knox County who are most vulnerable to the impacts of extreme heat and climate change.

After large earthquakes, science agencies release aftershock forecasts that are used by diverse set of institutions—emergency managers, critical infrastructure operators, and public information officials, among others— to inform their earthquake response and recovery operations (e.g.,). The visual design of forecast products can affect how these diverse users understand and use the forecasts. We recently held several user workshops in the United States, Mexico, and El Salvador and found that user needs for aftershock forecast information may vary by profession, use case, country, and with time since the main shock. This poster describes our study to design and test aftershock forecast products that support the distinct user needs found in our workshops. Product design choices were also based on a literature review of best practices in data visualization and cartography for natural hazards. We developed multiple versions of probabilistic shaking forecast maps, where we varied such design choices as color palette, discretization of the data, additional map layers, and whether to animate the map. Each prototype corresponded to a version of the forecast map aligned with specific user needs. We intend to assess these forecast product prototypes with a focus group of our workshop participants from the United States, Mexico, and El Salvador, revising products based on their feedback. We discuss implications for the visual communication of aftershock forecasts to wide-ranging audiences.

Recent decades have seen an escalation in the number and scale of destructive wildfires. In the western United States, the confluence of housing growth in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), legacies of fire suppression, and chronic drought exacerbated by climate change have contributed to growing wildfire losses. For the communities impacted by wildfire, the post-disaster recovery period provides a unique opportunity to promote wildfire risk reduction through fire-resistant building codes, land use regulations, and vegetation maintenance programs. Absent federal wildfire risk governance standards, state and local policies largely direct post-fire reconstruction, shaping adaptation and mitigation efforts. Additionally, where and how affected households rebuild is equally pivotal in reshaping the landscape of wildfire risk in the community. This poster presents preliminary findings from two studies in northern California (Lake, Sonoma, Butte, and Plumas counties). The first focuses on policy and practice barriers to wildfire mitigation during post-wildfire recovery, while the second focuses on residents’ housing recovery decisions made within this policy context. These locations have each experienced significant wildfire events in the last decade and contain a range of development types (urban/suburban, WUI, rural). Findings reveal tension between recovery- and mitigation-oriented goals, but also some synergies in accomplishing mitigation during recovery. The housing and recovery decisions that individuals make post-wildfire reflect the practical aspects of their place attachment as well as the influences of trauma, memory, and survivors’ relationships with nature. Cross-cutting conclusions consider links between individual- and community-level experiences navigating risk reduction with recovery.

This poster describes research synthesizing more than 80 publications to establish the current state of research on social equity in infrastructure in the United States. The review assesses definitions, frameworks, metrics, and case studies. National initiatives like Justice40 that are integrating equity into infrastructure projects are described and used as motivation to recommend new research needs. The review reveals that the multifaceted notion of social equity in infrastructure has steadily evolved over decades, with the goal of redressing historical injustices and safeguarding benefits for all members of society from infrastructure projects and the services they provide. Despite this evolution, we have determined that scholarly literature remains underdeveloped in delineating how infrastructure should be strategically located, designed, developed, and maintained in a way that supports equity, remain inclusive, and provide access for residents in a community throughout its useful life. There is a pressing need for research to identify, critique, and revise methods of measuring and implementing social equity to curtail unintended adverse consequences in both short and long-term contexts. Ensuring that infrastructure projects benefit and provide access to all societal segments is challenging, particularly in urban-rural settings with significant disparities in resources and demands across these different heterogenous landscapes and contexts. More studies in the review focused on the transportation, housing, and health systems than on education, power, and water infrastructures. Our poster will demonstrate these findings with timelines, metric categorization, and key themes identified in the review. We conclude with a reflection on critical gaps and research needs.

Stormwater infrastructure—often studied by engineers but little studied by social scientists—is an integral adaptation to flooding in a climate change-fueled world. In this poster, we describe our study of 311 call systems in East Baton Rouge Parish. The 311-call system provides residents the opportunity to call (or use an app or website) to ask for non-emergency aid for municipal services. Stormwater infrastructure is a frequent subject of calls made to East Baton Rouge. Our research employed a mixed methods design to study approximately 15,000 calls made to East Baton Rouge’s 311 call system from 2021 to 2023. First, we conducted a qualitative analysis of the 311 calls using an inductive, iterative coding strategy to generate codes and themes. Second, we employed a quantitative, geospatial analysis to analyze disparities in 311 calls across space and the social and environmental factors that could be driving these disparities. To do this analysis, we integrated data on flood risk (from FEMA’s 100-year floodplains and from the First Street Foundation’s FloodFactor data), flood impacts (from a major flood in August 2016), parcel data on home values and ownership (from EBR appraisal data), and socio-demographic neighborhood data (from the U.S. Census). Qualitative findings revealed that the primary issues prompting 311 calls included cleaning discharge, addressing erosion, and worries about flooding destroying properties, among many others. Quantitative findings showed the unequal spatial distribution of the calls were associated with social factors and environmental risks.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Disasters Program advances science and builds tools to help communities make informed decisions for disaster planning. Before, during, and after disasters strike, our timely and free information and agile network of partners help communities worldwide reduce risk, improve response, hasten recovery, and build disaster resilience. The NASA Disasters Program, along with the newly launched Disaster Response Coordination System (DRCS), use the best-available science, technology, and expertise to aid teams responding to disasters on the ground. We develop relationships with stakeholders during blue sky times, to ensure our team can quickly understand what products they may need during an active response. The February 2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquakes are an example of how the team supported a variety of stakeholders during a disaster response. In addition to the mass damage that occurred due to the ground movement itself, this event also caused cascading hazards, such as landslides. The NASA Disasters Program received requests for support from a variety of stakeholders, which led to the activation of the team. We were able to provide multiple relevant products to our stakeholders, supporting their response. This poster will review the disaster life cycle through the lens of the NASA Disasters Program, highlighting key aspects of the coordination with stakeholders and how Earth observation data can aid in situational awareness during disaster response.

Vulnerable populations are disproportionately impacted by natural hazards like wildfires. It is crucial to develop equitable and effective evacuation strategies to meet their unique needs. While existing studies offer valuable insights, we need to improve our understanding of how vulnerabilities affect evacuation decisions, and how this varies spatially. This poster describes a study aiming to analyze the impacts of social vulnerabilities on aggregated evacuation decisions, including evacuation rates, departure delays, and destination distances by leveraging large-scale Global Positioning System (GPS) data. Specifically, we inferred evacuation decisions at the census block group level, utilizing GPS data. We then employed ordinary least squares and geographically weighted regression models to investigate the impacts of social vulnerabilities on evacuation decisions. We also used Moran's I statistic to test if these impacts were consistent across different block groups. The 2019 Kincade Fire in Sonoma County, California, was used as the case study. The impacts of social vulnerabilities on evacuation rates show significant spatial variations across block groups, whereas their effects on the other two decision types do not. Additionally, unemployment, a factor under-explored in previous studies, was found to negatively impact both the departure delays and destination distances of evacuees at the aggregate level. Furthermore, upon comparing the significant factors across different models, we observed that some vulnerabilities influencing evacuation rates for all residents differed from those affecting the departure delays and destination distances, which only applied to evacuees. These findings can guide emergency managers and transportation planners to enhance equitable wildfire evacuation planning and operations.

A significant gap exists for most alerting authorities in local jurisdictions across the United States, where the focus has been on technology for message distribution—or how to get the message to those at risk—rather than education, training, and tools to improve message design for imminent threat communication. Using the Warning Response Model, this project developed a tool—the Message Design Dashboard (MDD)—that allows emergency managers to write effective and complete public alert and warning messages using templates grounded in empirical research. We are currently training emergency managers in effective warning message design through use of the MDD––an effort that has proven to be successful and shows promise for larger-scale implementation. Using data from in-training message writing activities implemented at multiple points throughout each session, we demonstrate that message quality improves through the training. This poster will provide an overview of our work to date leading to the development of the MDD, highlight evidence of training success, and summarize future research activities.

In U.S. coastal communities with tourism economies, significant differences in disaster vulnerability and resilience are observed between two types of housing: affordable primary residences, serving permanent residents and local tourism workers, and short-term rental vacation properties, catering to seasonal occupants and tourists. Local policies, enacted prior to disaster, materialize in mechanisms such as building codes, land use ordinances, zoning decisions, and comprehensive development plans. Over decades of enforcement, they have played a key role in shaping long-term disparity. Well-designed and enforced regulations can mitigate risk by promoting durable infrastructure, appropriate land use, affordability, and accessibility. Conversely, insufficient, outdated, and exclusionary measures may heighten vulnerability and disparity while restricting affordability and access to local economic opportunities. We conducted qualitative analysis of various local policy and regulation documents in Lee County, FL, and Galveston County, TX. The aim of this study was to examine pre-storm priorities and to evaluate their contribution to variations in quality, affordability, hazard protection, growth, and other criteria between the two housing types. In this poster, we will present findings on how the pre-disaster development policies of Lee and Galveston have influenced variations in resilience and vulnerability between affordable primary housing and short-term rental seasonal housing over the past two decades.

Lioness: Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance (JIWA) is an organization led by currently and formerly incarcerated girls and women in Texas working to end incarceration and the systematic devaluing of persons within the Texas criminal legal system. The organization aims to build a society where girls, women, and gender-expansive people are free from violence and harm in the criminal legal system through radical advocacy, leadership development, community building, grassroots organizing, and civic engagement. These advocacy efforts led Lioness leadership to consult researchers from Texas A&M University for legislative support, resulting in a highly successful partnership over the past year. The collaboration between Texas A&M and Lioness further developed through shared community engagement efforts, with Texas A&M researchers actively participating in codeveloping research projects, securing grants, spreading awareness, and working to uplift Lioness’ members. This collaboration has proven mutually beneficial, with Lioness’ leadership gaining research skills and increased agency. Texas A&M researchers and students have gained invaluable insight into designing studies that meet the needs of vulnerable populations. Moving forward, Lioness and Texas A&M aim to expand their research and advocacy efforts by applying for an NIH Research Project Grant (R01) and lobbying for policy and legislation change. Their goal is to implement actionable policy changes supported by their research, addressing the systemic issues impacting system-impacted women. Together, Lioness and Texas A&M are working towards an equitable and just future for incarcerated women by advancing research, amplifying marginalized voices, and driving meaningful social and political changes.

Bridges are a familiar component of the built coastal environment. Hydrologic features are in constant flux, requiring bridge engineers to follow strict design guidelines and monitor frequently. City officials and planners are concerned with various policy and funding matters that affect evacuation routes, maintenance, and public perception. In addition, abundant ecological issues intersect with all of these matters. When it comes to vulnerability assessments and the role of bridges through these same landscapes, the challenges are inherently interdisciplinary. This poster presents a case study of how bridges are treated in a vulnerability assessment in Cedar Key, Florida. This vulnerability assessment was issued to support policymakers as they made decisions about adaptation strategies. In particular, the unique conditions in Cedar Key provide the basis for understanding the possibilities of broadening the framework for bridge assessments beyond what is typically issued by the state’s Standardized Vulnerability Assessment. A combination of the Florida Department of Transportation bridge inspection reports, historical hurricane data, topographic Lidar survey, sea-level rise projections, and flood risk mapping is used as a guide to analyze existing processes and identify gaps. The current definitions adopted and requirements for exposure assessment leave potentially critical data out of the equation, which could hinder funding and planning efforts. This investigation aims to provide a deeper insight into the role of bridges in vulnerability assessments and encourage more significant cross-pollination between the different fields that overlap where a bridge stands.

The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Resilience Summit will bring together resilience experts from around the country to share ideas, best practices, and research. The Resilience Summit will provide an opportunity for SBA to share new developments in our approach to building resilience among the nation’s small businesses. We hope to identify new opportunities for collaboration and partnership at the Resilience Summit. Our poster will highlight the outcomes of the summit. The FY2022-2026 SBA Strategic Plan strives to “Build Resilient Businesses and a Sustainable Economy.” In response to increasing threats, SBA created the Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience to better support American citizens and businesses in disaster planning and preparedness, economic recovery, hazard mitigation, and the development of resilience. Over the past five years, SBA has approved more than $108 million in disaster loans directly to local businesses and disaster survivors to mitigate against future disasters and build resiliency in communities. SBA’s commitment to resilience has moved to the forefront of the Agency’s priorities. After a disaster, SBA’s programs help restore small businesses and their communities. Post-disaster, small businesses’ ability to access capital, information, and other resources often varies. Through SBA’s post-disaster mitigation lending program, borrowers can reduce future property damage and rebuild stronger using SBA’s low-interest, subsidized loans. As climate change continues to create more frequent and more costly disasters, SBA is emphasizing communicating to small business owners the benefits of mitigation and resilience.

The 1970 Ancash Earthquake had profound consequences as befits its notoriety as the deadliest earthquake and landslide in Peruvian history. However, this disaster is rarely if ever discussed in most fundamental texts regarding disasters in the United States even in the context of international emergency management. Analysis of this case study yields many useful lessons for researchers and practitioners to this day regarding a range of issues including risk communication, repeated events, compound hazards, governance, and foreign aid distribution. The disaster is currently quite visible in English language sources through the field of disaster anthropology, though the implications in other fields could have profound benefits for the field of disaster studies as a whole given the repeated propensity for major earthquakes in South America in the intervening fifty years. This poster showcases the results of a literature review of the current body of knowledge to judge the present impact of the earthquake on scholarly sources, drawing upon both English and Spanish language sources in order to determine in which disciplines of literature this critical event is discussed and how this discussion varies between the English and Latin American bodies of literature.

Heat-related illnesses can be prevented when people are informed and capable of taking protective action. For this reason, it is urgent to effectively inform the public about heat risk. This involves not only communicating with the public when heat risk is imminent but also educating the public about heat risk so that it can interpret and make use of the messaging received. The field of risk communication offers recommendations and guidance that can help inform heat risk communication related to warning source and channel as well as to message purpose, content, and style. Meanwhile, the field of health literacy, and in particular the newly conceptualized “climate and health literacy,” offer proposed pathways that can be leveraged to help educate the public about heat risk. We suggest that bridging these two fields and the actors (or practitioners) within them promises to be fruitful in the reduction of heat-related morbidity and mortality and in improving overall health outcomes in vulnerable populations. However, practice within each of these fields has a history rooted in the information deficit model: the one-way exchange of information from messengers to receivers. In this poster, we review that history in brief and discuss how these fields might be bridged in ways that allow for both heat risk communication and climate and health literacy to be designed with direct knowledge of and engagement with target audiences, allowing the information deficit model to be overcome. We also provide observational evidence for the need for such bridging to take place.

The Marshall Fire in Boulder County, Colorado, sparked and spread into nearby urban areas in an unusually fast timeframe. Without a widely used warning system to alert the public, officials used social media as one warning information outlet to encourage rapid, large-scale evacuations. This poster describes an analysis of 1,316 Tweets published by 101 media and government Twitter (now X) accounts on the day of the fire. We examined the Tweets for risk messaging components and coded according to which components were included. The risk messaging components used were derived from the Protective Action Decision Model and the Extended Parallel Process Model. Tweets from the National Weather Service in Boulder were evaluated using recommendations from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Hazard Risk Communication guide. The risk messaging components that improved engagement were dependent on the type of account doing the tweeting, typically falling into the expertise or “job” of the entity represented by that account. Overall, the inclusion of environmental cues in raw video from the scene of the fire proved to be powerful in boosting engagement across numerous different types of accounts. The National Weather Service fulfilled the eleven recommendations from NOAA’s Hazard Risk Communication guide that was used in this research, and the use of lively language, vivid images, empathy, and the “all-clear” were noted among the well-performing tweets. This poster will provide helpful information to those responsible for posting on social media in an official capacity during a wildfire by examining how risk communication theory and recommendations performed in a real-world scenario.

This poster aims to highlight the importance of community partnerships and youth engagement for the lab’s project centered on enhancing indoor air quality (IAQ) in Jacksonville, FL. The diverse focus group includes both community members, youth from detention centers, and the Youth Action Series (YAS), a coalition of local youth-oriented organizations. This group played a crucial role in the development of the indoor air quality survey, ensuring it was tailored to the most pressing IAQ concerns identified by those directly impacted. The youth participants initiated the deployment of the survey alongside various local activities, such as cleaning the neighborhood, painting houses, and participating in community events, to both gather data and elevate environmental consciousness. Additionally, the project involved installing indoor air quality sensors in volunteer participants' homes for a comprehensive analysis of their indoor environments. A significant youth contribution was the construction of Corsi-Rosenthal Boxes, demonstrating a proactive approach to environmental education and action. This project goes beyond merely measuring and improving IAQ; it fosters deep community and youth involvement, highlighting the importance of collective efforts in environmental health endeavors. Furthermore, it adopts a participatory action research approach, allowing community concerns to direct the research focus on addressing the most critical environmental issues. The ultimate aim of this study is to showcase the effectiveness of community and youth engagement in environmental health research and to underscore the potential of participatory approaches in driving meaningful change in public health outcomes.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) Weather Informatics and Decision Support (WIDS) Division recently formed its Social and Behavioral Sciences Branch, which will lead and coordinate social and behavioral science weather research in support of WIDS and GSL missions. Rationale for the formation and integration of this branch within WIDS includes the need to focus on understanding how key users, such as forecasters, public safety officials, and members of the public make decisions using weather information and where gaps in information and service exist. Doing so will help to ensure that research and development of products and services created within WIDS, and within the broader weather enterprise, are user-centered and optimized to aid in protective decision making. Foundational social and behavioral science research conducted within the branch will also focus on inclusive risk communication, social vulnerability, service equity, and decision science. This poster presentation highlights ongoing and planned activities that the Social and Behavioral Sciences Branch is leading, including areas of collaboration within GSL and across the NOAA. Key anticipated outcomes and applications of these activities include integrated and interdisciplinary approaches to product development and refinement; product and service creation that is useful, usable, and user-informed; scholarly and applied contributions to social science weather research; and a greater awareness of social and behavioral science capacity, importance, and potential within GSL and NOAA.

There is a growing need for new and improved models, observations, technologies, and tools to support decisions involving wildland fire. To address challenges involving the total fire environment, an operations-to-research-to-operations testbed entirely focused on wildland fire management from both physical and social science perspectives is essential. Accordingly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Global Systems Laboratory has created the Fire Weather Testbed (FWT), a dedicated physical and virtual “knowledge translation platform” where end-users (i.e., meteorologists, incident commanders, land/emergency managers, etc.) are invited to learn, test, and evaluate the accessibility, operability, and utility of emergent fire weather-related products and processes. Using mixed methods approaches, the FWT serves to translate end-user insights to product developers and the broader research community towards the shared goal of improving products to meet operational needs. Essential and unique to this effort is the FWT User Needs Assessment Team (UNAT). Through continuous interviews, focus groups, and observational field work, the UNAT fosters relationships with end-users to understand their dynamic, time sensitive, and regional information and decision support needs. The UNAT helps prioritize and design FWT evaluations based on learned user-needs, and UNAT reports back to end-users and broader fire communities to help support and drive the fire weather research agenda, within and beyond NOAA. This poster will provide an overview of the UNAT research methods and results from user engagement to date, including a review of the needs of “incident meteorologists” who provide weather forecasting information to Incident Management Teams while deployed to wildland fire incidents.

With record-breaking freezing temperatures, the 2021 Great Texas Freeze resulted in widespread power outages and safety hazards (e.g., burst water pipes and car accidents). Requests for services to address social needs may increase during environmental hazards, and technology-assisted social care coordination provides one strategy to support individuals in need. However, since disasters may overwhelm the social systems in which these technologies are embedded, it is critical to understand how they are used to prepare for or respond to these stressors. This poster describes a study examining case referral patterns on a social care referral platform in the weeks before, during, and after a disaster. A retrospective analysis was conducted using social care referral data of adults living in Texas from January 12, 2021 (30 days pre-disaster) to March 22, 2021 (30 days post-disaster). During the study period, there were 1,381 cases, or documented social needs, for 826 individuals. In the 30 days before the disaster, we observed an average of 21.47 cases per day; this was dramatically reduced (51.9%) during the disaster period (10.3 cases per day). Notably, we observed a spike (72 cases) in connection with requests two days before the first weather advisory. In the 30-day post-disaster period, we observed a rate comparable to the 30-day pre-disaster period (19.76 cases per day). While the results are preliminary, we observe the real-life implications of disasters on cross-sector social care collaboration. Moreover, these data suggest proactive measures are being taken to address the anticipated surge in needs during adverse environmental conditions.

Tsunamis have caused an enormous number of fatalities and inflicted major property damage and economic losses around the globe. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), together with the co-located World Data Service for Geophysics (WDS), has developed a long-term archive and data management system that provides access to global tsunami data. The NCEI’s online and searchable global historical tsunami database contains over 31,000 tsunami wave observations from over 2,800 tsunami events. The database includes observational data on tsunami sources and tsunami runup records, including locations where tsunami waves were observed by eyewitnesses, field reconnaissance surveys, tide gauges, or deep-ocean sensors. The database historical tsunami runup data and known tsunami source zones is robust and reliable, and, although more limited in scope, the geological data is useful. This information has facilitated the development of qualitative tsunami hazard assessments. Complementary to these records, NCEI archives analog (historical tide gauge marigrams) and high-resolution digital coastal water level data and ocean-bottom pressure data, It also performs quality-control and tidal analysis of these data. Additionally, the NCEI/WDS Natural Hazards Image Database contains images related to geologic hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. Because images illustrate physical and societal impacts of natural hazard events not always reflected in instrumental and numerical data, collecting and archiving these data supports a more complete understanding of natural hazard events. Combined, these historical resources help communicate the full story of tsunami events through free and open access to historical tsunami information that is key to supporting planning and decision-making in the fields of tsunami mitigation, warning, response, and research.

Healthcare coalitions have demonstrated a variety of ways to effectively share critical resources during disasters. Home health agencies (HHA) provide a vital lifeline to older adults, but these critical services are at-risk during emergencies due to the lack of resources among HHAs and their disconnection from broader community emergency planning efforts. This poster describes a case study of the interorganizational relationships between the Veterans Health Administration (VA) and contracted HHA partners. The study aimed to identify opportunities for healthcare systems to extend emergency resources to HHAs so that the latter can maintain care during disasters. We interviewed 17 stakeholders from six VA Medical Centers. Data were analyzed through rapid qualitative analysis. Emergency Managers and other VA staff demonstrated interest in identifying the appropriate level of partnering during emergencies and provided a range of informational and practical resources that could be shared with HHAs. Creating a pipeline of support through existing relationships can provide a model for health systems to collaborate with community-based providers, extending available emergency resources and making clinical care teams, patients, and communities more resilient to disasters. We will describe those resources and how to develop and sustain those strategies and relationships.

Cancer has long been a leading cause of death in the United States. Social vulnerability Index (SVI), which consists of non-medical factors such as socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity that influence health outcomes, are known to contribute to disparities in cancer incidence and mortality. While previous studies have analyzed only a specific kind of disease site in isolated geographic regions, limited studies have investigated the comprehensive association between historical redlining and cancer-related hospital utilization. This poster describes a study that aimed to explore the complex relationship between environmental risk, cancer-related hospital utilization, SVI, and historical redlining using structural equation modeling. This study conducted three path models to confirm relationships between variables. Then, we analyzed spatial association to compensate for spatial autocorrelation, utilizing spatial statistical models and ordinary least squares. The results revealed a significant relationship between environmental risk, SVI, cancer-related hospital utilization, and redlining. Notably, redlining impacted SVI and environmental risk, ultimately affecting cancer-related hospital utilization. The results suggest that cancer-related hospital utilization is affected not only by the individual's socio-economic status but also by the residential segmentation due to structural discrimination.

While there is a scientific consensus on the need to mitigate and adapt to climate change, there is relatively little concern among the general public as the major impacts of climate change will only become salient in the future. This is important as low risk perceptions negatively influence individual and institutional responses to climate change. To increase risk perceptions of climate change, studies suggest that we can use extreme weather events (e.g., hurricanes, flooding) as focusing events that communicate the risks of climate change. This assumption is premised on a hypothesized process in which experiencing an extreme weather event increases risk perceptions of climate change. This poster describes how we leveraged recent advances in Virtual Reality, where there is a growing literature showing that individuals internalize well-designed virtual experiences as if they were real, to test this assumption. We ran a lab-in-the-field experiment with random assignment of a treatment, which consisted of an Immersive Virtual Environment simulation of a future extreme weather event in Galveston, TX that is a clear manifestation of climate change. Using randomization as an identification strategy, this project isolates the treatment effect within the controlled environment of a social science laboratory setting. This project shows that experiencing an extreme weather event will enhance the public awareness of climate change. Our findings suggest that perception convergence is an underexplored and potentially crucial factor that can either drive or hinder adaptation efforts at the community level.

Irregular coastal trash (e.g., gas tanks, Christmas trees) is extremely harmful to the coastal environment, often releasing toxic gas and contaminating soil. Due to climate change, frequent hurricanes and severe impacts are likely to exacerbate the problem. Many research papers reveal how environmental disasters, like hurricanes, will bring irregular trash to coastal areas. Some of this trash may not decompose and this affects the local ecosphere. Research has revealed this trash causes damage distinct from normal plastic trash. Gas tanks, for example, may spill gas onto the ground and furniture may contain synthetic materials that release toxic chemicals into the environment. This poster describes my lab team’s clean-up in the coastal area at Cedar Key, Florida, where we discovered a great volume of irregular trash after Hurricane Idalia in 2023. Cedar Key’s residents were impacted by this trash that piled up around the river near their gardens. This irregular trash does not get as much attention as regular plastic trash. This poster describes research that aims to call attention to this issue by exploring how irregular coastal trash harms the environment, where it comes from, and how long it takes to decompose. The poster will also summarize the damage caused using a comprehensive review of state-of-art science. The trash data comes from the Ocean Conservancy’s clean-up report over the past 10 years and field trips, focusing on their categories and quantity. In the end, the poster will provide some suggestions (e.g., focus on specific areas with the most irregular trash) for clean-up activities and other solutions to this trash.

This poster describes research using three different datasets to better understand the interplay between social vulnerability and housing damage that occurred in Florida as a result of Hurricane Michael. The first dataset on damages data is drawn from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s registrations for individual disaster assistance. The second dataset we used is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index (CDC SVI) which allowed us to map social vulnerability data at the census block group level, subdivided into its four component themes. For the third dataset, we gathered detailed wind and rain data at the census block group level in order to examine the relative strength of the storm in each affected area. In the poster, we discuss preliminary results that confirm the hypothesis that the combined effects of not only the weather, but also the different aspects of social vulnerability as captured in the CDC SVI themes, do have a significant impact on the overall housing damages that resulted from the storm.