Adapting to Evacuation: Using Information Technology for Social Support

本研究调查了信息和通信技术如何在卡特里娜飓风灾害中为弱势群体发挥作用。关于灾害影响的研究一致表明，妇女和社会经济地位较低的受害者更容易受到强迫搬迁的不利影响。信息和通信技术在哪些方面能够或未能为这些弱势群体提供重大帮助？最近发生的自然灾害迫使成千上万的人被迫搬迁，并破坏或摧毁了许多社区。信息和通信技术似乎在帮助受害者科普灾害后果方面发挥了重要作用。非正式报告显示，撤离者和帮助撤离者的人使用互联网寻找家人和朋友，搜索他们社区的最新情况，寻找住房和工作，并交换所需的服务，商品和金钱援助。许多非正式报告还指出，如果要在灾害中有效利用技术，仍需取得巨大进展。例如，大量的低质量信息，如人名拼写错误，使得通过人员定位网站快速搜索家人和朋友变得困难或不可能。这项研究的重点是技术如何影响在自然灾害发生后的非自愿搬迁以及寻找在疏散中失去的家人和朋友后的帮助和支持交流。对重大灾害和非自愿搬迁的影响进行调整可能需要数月甚至数年。为了获得灾后立即使用技术的信息，并评估灾后调整率，该项目将在4至6个月的时间内进行两轮回顾性访谈和一次自我报告调查。因为这项研究的重点是帮助的有效性，研究参与者是受卡特里娜飓风影响的巴吞鲁日和新奥尔良的居民，以及继续在那里的临时住所工作的实地志愿者。这项研究探讨了流离失所者用来处理飓风后果的应对机制，以及他们认为最有用的技术。报告还审查了志愿人员如何利用技术及其帮助那些无法直接上网或使用手机的飓风受害者的能力。研究人员将研究志愿者运营的支持，人员定位和实物捐赠网站是否能够达到最需要支持的人群。结果将同时感兴趣的计算机科学家有兴趣的创新使用的技术，工作和不工作，在这场灾难和社会科学家关心的过程中的社会支持和灾害应对。这项研究也将使决策者感兴趣，因为他们需要关于信息和通信技术在灾害中所起作用的确切信息，以及需要在哪些方面进行投资以减轻未来灾害的影响。这项工作的学术价值在于，它审查了在一次独特的灾害事件中，未得到充分研究的人口使用信息和通信技术的情况。这项工作的更广泛影响是为决策者和技术开发者提供关于最有用和将最有用的信息和通信技术类型的重要见解。调查结果将导致提出建议，以设计对灾害情况下的流离失所者，特别是那些处境最不利的人最有用的新技术和服务。

This research investigates how information and communication technologies played a role in the Hurricane Katrina disaster for disadvantaged populations. Research on the effects of disasters consistently shows that women and victims of lower socioeconomic status are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of forced relocation. In what ways did information and communication technologies enable or fail to enable significant help for these vulnerable groups? Recent natural disasters forced thousands of people to relocate involuntarily and damaged or destroyed many communities. Information and communication technologies appear to have played a significant role in helping victims cope with the aftermath of the disasters. Informal reports suggest that evacuees, and people who helped evacuees, used the Internet to find family and friends, to search for updates on the state of their neighborhoods, to search for housing and jobs, and to exchange needed services, goods, and monetary aid. Many of the informal reports also suggest that great strides still need to be made if technology is to be used effectively in disasters. For instance, a flood of poor quality information, such as misspellings of people's names, made searching quickly for family and friends through people-locator sites difficult or impossible. This research focuses on how technology may have affected the exchange of help and support after an involuntary relocation in the wake of this natural disaster and in the search for family and friends lost in evacuations. Adjustment to effects of major disasters and involuntary relocation can take many months or even years. In order to obtain information about technology use immediately after the disaster and to assess rates of adjustment post-disaster, this project will conduct two rounds of retrospective interviews and a self-report survey over the course of 4-6 months. Because this research is focused on the effectiveness of help, the study participants are residents of Baton Rouge and New Orleans who were affected by Hurricane Katrina, and on-the-ground volunteers who have continued to work in temporary accommodations there. This research examines the coping mechanisms that displaced individuals employed to deal with the aftermath of the hurricane and the technologies they found most useful. It also examines how volunteers used technology and their ability to help those hurricane victims who did not have direct access to the Internet or cellular phones. The researchers will study whether volunteer-run support, people-locator and in-kind donation websites were able to reach populations most needing support. The results will simultaneously be of interest to computer scientists interested in innovative uses of technology that worked and did not work in this disaster and to social scientists concerned with the processes underlying social support and disaster coping. This research would also be of interest to policy makers who need hard information about the role played by information and communication technology in the disaster and where investments need to be made to alleviate the effects of future disasters. The intellectual merit of this work is that it examines use of information and communication technologies in understudied populations during a unique disaster event. The broader impact of this work is to provide important insights for policy makers and technology developers about the types of information and communication technologies that are most useful, and would be most useful. The findings will lead to recommendations for the design of new technologies and services that would be of most use to displaced persons in a disaster situation, especially those who are most disadvantaged.