Perceptions of Earthquake Impacts and Loss-Reduction Policy Preferences Among Community Residents and Opinion Leaders

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9812556 Nigg This award is to the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware for a collaborative research project with the Research Center for Disaster Reduction Systems, a unit within the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University. The objectives of the project are to better understand: (1) the expectations that public and stakeholder groups have concerning likely earthquake impacts on the built environment; (2) the importance they attach to the survivability and performance of various elements of the built environment, including infrastructure systems (bridges, highways, utility lifelines); and (3) their policy preferences with respect to mitigation and other loss-reduction strategies, with a particular emphasis on understanding what are considered acceptable levels of performance, loss, and disruption. The project uses two methodologies to investigate these issues: (1) a community survey of randomly selected residents in the Oakland/Alameda County area of California; and (2) small group exercises of prominent members of four constituency groups--engineers, local government officials, representatives of the business and financial community, and city and county residents--in that same area. ***