Decision-Making Among Businesses in Post-Catastrophe Uncertainty: How Economic Geographies Re-Form in New Orleans

该项目旨在了解灾难后城市环境中居民重新安置的商业方面。首要的研究问题是：企业如何做出空间决策，决定是返回还是搬迁，以及这些决策如何反过来影响景观和经济。具体来说，该项目将收集和分析时间关键的数据，包括卡特里娜飓风后新奥尔良市人口重新增加后，企业返回新奥尔良的内容、地点、方式、原因以及时间。将定期对企业进行电话调查和街头调查。街道调查将包括每两周对新奥尔良三个主要商业走廊进行一次完整的调查，跟踪何时何地以及哪些企业恢复和生存（或失败）。电话调查，每2至3周进行5轮，将针对整个城市的企业。在每一轮中，将进行按人口普查区和几个商业类别分层的500个完整调查的随机抽样。这两组调查数据将被绘制成地图，并与人口普查、洪水损失和其他GIS（地理信息系统）数据层集成。这将提供一个有价值的，时间关键的时空数据集，可以用来回答一些具体的研究问题。很少有研究集中在收集时间关键的，经验性的数据，企业如何作出空间决策，他们是否保留或搬迁后的灾难，特别是灾难的深度和广度，因为我们已经看到在卡特里娜飓风，影响整个大都会新奥尔良。为该项目收集的时间紧迫的数据将提供独特的信息，说明在这种前所未有的情况下企业如何做出决策。将街头调查和电话调查结合起来并进行长期跟踪，将为研究人类-社会-经济在空间和时间上的动态提供重要信息。这些数据将作为后续研究的重要基准数据集，并与其他研究（例如关于个人决策的研究）进行比较。该项目的成果还将有助于政府和规划机构制定有效的政策，促进该区域的经济复苏。

This project seeks to understand the commercial side of resettlement of residents in urban environments after a catastrophe. The overarching research question is: how businesses make spatial decisions on whether to return or relocate and how these decisions in turn impact the landscape and its economy. Specifically, the project will collect and analyze time-critical data on what, where, how, why, and when businesses return to New Orleans following the repopulation of the city after Hurricane Katrina. Both telephone surveys and street surveys of businesses will be conducted periodically. The street surveys will include a complete survey of three major commercial corridors in New Orleans every two weeks, tracking where, when, and what businesses return and survive (or fail). The telephone surveys, conducted every 2~3 weeks for 5 rounds, will target businesses throughout the entire city. In each round, a random sample of 500 complete surveys stratified by census tract and by a few business categories will be conducted. Both sets of survey data will then be mapped and integrated with census, flood damage, and other GIS (geographic information system) data layers. This will provide a valuable, time-critical spatial-temporal data set that can serve to answer a number of specific research questions.Very little research has focused on collecting time-critical, empirical data on how businesses make spatial decisions on whether they remain or relocate after a catastrophe, especially a catastrophe as deep and wide as we have seen in Hurricane Katrina that affects an entire metropolis of New Orleans. The time-critical data collected for this project will provide unique information on how decisions among businesses are made in this unprecedented case. The coupling and tracking of street and telephone surveys over time will provide vital information for research on human-social-economic dynamics over space and time. The data will serve as an important benchmark dataset for subsequent research and for comparisons with other studies (e.g. studies on decisions made by individuals). Results from this project will also help governmental and planning agencies in devising effective policies for economic recovery in the region.