Collaborative Research: DRU: Community Risk Management of Hurricane and Tsunami Surge Hazards

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This project develops tools for assessing coastal communities best options for protecting themselves from hurricane and tsunami surge hazards. The investigators create comprehensive and integrated models of surge impacts, warning transmission, and evacuation behavior. These models help emergency managers decide which neighborhoods can safely evacuate from the risk area, which must seek shelter in safe havens, and when these actions must be initiated. The development of these models requires close interdisciplinary collaboration among the fields of social and behavioral science, information technology, and hydrodynamics. The need for, and level of investment in, emergency response capability depends on the community context in which these programs operate. Consequently, data are collected on the extent to which vulnerable communities have already adopted land use and building construction practices that reduce their surge hazard vulnerability.This project has five tasks, the first of which is the development of mathematical models of surge hazard casualties and damage. The second task is the refinement of the investigators evacuation models through surveys that provide additional input data for those models. The third task involves systematic comparisons between a hurricane evacuation management decision support system (EMDSS) and a tsunami scenario simulator (SIM-TSUNAMI) to identify features in each that would enhance the other. The fourth task is an evaluation of EMDSS and SIM-TSUNAMI in terms of their functionality and usability. The fifth task is a community policy process review that assesses changes in households tsunami hazard awareness and emergency preparedness and examines the processes influencing community management of hurricane and tsunami surge hazards. The research team will incorporate the findings into two computer models, EMDSS and SIM-TSUNAMI; their quantitative prediction capabilities will assist coastal jurisdictions in their surge hazard mitigation planning and emergency preparedness programs. The investigators will also develop the functionality and usability of these models to make them more suitable for use by emergency managers, land use planners, and transportation planners for jurisdictions along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts.