SGER: An Integrated Study of Post-Flood Hydrology, Ecology, Politics and Policy Change: A Cross-National, Urban Perspective

洪水、地震和飓风等自然灾害的影响远远超出了与实际事件相关的物质损失。自然灾害的政策和政治影响可以是立竿见影的，可以是真正的救灾援助，也可以是长期的，比如改变长期存在的土地使用条例。由于热带风暴艾莉森，休斯顿遭受了超过50亿美元的损失，22人丧生，估计有7.3万所房屋。最近，由于中欧大洪水，德国城市德累斯顿和捷克共和国的布拉格也经历了类似的灾害，其影响估计以数十亿美元计。这些活动的相似性提供了一个独特的研究机会，有助于更广泛地了解将活动重点放在政策制定、政治以及社会总体健康和福祉上的作用。从研究的角度来看，我们感兴趣的是了解城市洪灾等重点事件如何发展和传播，并影响有关物理基础设施和随后的政策变化的决策过程。这项SGER提案的目标有两个。首先，我们建议开始与欧洲的社会科学家和物理学家接触，并建立一个合作研究团队，能够专注于城市洪灾导致的公共政策变化这一广泛的主题。研究人员将在各自领域扩大个人联系，并在物理和社会科学的实质性研究领域寻找更多的合作者，以及受经常性和非经常性城市洪水事件影响的地理区域。在此过程中，我们还将确定相关和可靠的数据来源，并尽可能收集有关最近发生在德国、捷克共和国和休斯顿等洪灾事件影响的水文、生态和社会实地基线数据。SGER项目这一阶段的终点将是一支定义明确、尽职尽责的跨学科和跨国家研究团队。第二个目标是将政治学/公共行政、水文学和地球科学等学科整合成一个具有战略意义的大规模、多年期、跨国家、协作、跨学科的研究提案，提交给多个国家科学基金计划或一个主要的交叉国家科学基金倡议。这项提议的背景是跨国的。自然科学和社会科学的融合也反映了国家科学基金会目前对从多个角度处理复杂的社会和自然问题的兴趣。

0313984MohantyNatural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes have impactsfar beyond the physical damage related to the actual event. The policy andpolitical impacts of natural disasters can be immediate, in the form offederal disaster relief aid, or long-term, as in changes to long-standingland use regulations. As a result of Tropical Storm Allison, Houstonsuffered over $5 billion in damages, the loss of 22 lives and an estimated73,000 homes. Recently, as a result of major flooding in Central Europe, theGerman city of Dresden, and Prague, in the Czech Republic, experiencedsimilar disasters, the impacts of which are being estimated in the billionsof dollars. The similarity of these events provides a unique researchopportunity to contribute a broader understanding of the role of focusingevents on policy development, politics, and the general health and wellbeing of society. From a research perspective, we are interested inunderstanding how focusing events, such as urban flooding, develop andpropagate across scales and influence decision processes in regard tophysical infrastructure and subsequent changes in policy. The objectives ofthis SGER proposal are two-fold. First, we propose to initiate contact withsocial and physical scientists in Europe and develop a collaborativeresearch team capable of focusing on the broad topic of public policy changeas a result of urban flooding. Researchers will expand upon personalcontacts in their respective areas and seek out additional collaborators insubstantive research areas within the physical and social sciences, as wellas geographical areas impacted by both recurring and nonrecurring urbanflooding events. In so doing, we will also identify sources of relevant andreliable data, and to the extent possible, collect baseline hydrologic,ecologic, and social field data on the impact of the recent floodingincidents such as those in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Houston. The endpoint of this phase of the SGER project will be a well-defined, andcommitted interdisciplinary and cross-national research team. The secondobjective is to integrate the disciplines of political science/publicadministration, hydrology and the geosciences into a strategically soundlarge scale, multi-year cross-national, collaborative, interdisciplinaryresearch proposal for submission to either multiple NSF programs, or onemajor cross-cutting NSF initiative. The context for this proposal iscross-national. The integration of the physical and social sciences alsoreflects the current interest from NSF in approaching complex social andnatural problems through multiple perspectives.