Adapting to Evacuation: Using Information Technology for Social Support

这项研究调查了信息和通信技术如何在卡特里娜飓风灾难中为弱势群体发挥作用。对灾害影响的研究一贯表明，社会经济地位较低的妇女和受害者更容易受到被迫搬迁的不利影响。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？最近的自然灾害迫使数以千计的人非自愿地重新安置，损坏或摧毁了许多社区。信息和通信技术似乎在帮助受害者应对灾害后果方面发挥了重要作用。非正式报告显示，疏散人员和帮助疏散人员的人使用互联网寻找家人和朋友，搜索社区状况的最新消息，寻找住房和工作，并交换所需的服务、商品和金钱援助。许多非正式报告还表明，如果要在灾难中有效地使用技术，仍需取得巨大进展。例如，大量质量不佳的信息，如人名拼写错误，使得通过人名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可能如何影响在这次自然灾害后非自愿搬迁后的帮助和支持的交换，以及在寻找在疏散中失踪的家人和朋友的过程中。适应重大灾害和非自愿搬迁的影响可能需要数月甚至数年的时间。为了在灾后立即获得有关技术使用的信息并评估灾后的调整率，本项目将在4-6个月期间进行两轮回溯性访谈和一次自我报告调查。由于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当地志愿者。这项研究考察了流离失所的人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。它还审查了志愿者如何使用技术和他们的能力来帮助那些无法直接访问互联网或手机的飓风受害者。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接触到最需要支持的人群。同时，对创新使用在这场灾难中起作用和不起作用的技术感兴趣的计算机科学家，以及关注潜在的社会支持和灾难应对过程的社会科学家，都将对这一结果感兴趣。政策制定者也会对这项研究感兴趣，他们需要关于信息和通信技术在灾难中发挥的作用以及需要在哪些方面进行投资以减轻未来灾难的影响的确切信息。这项工作的学术价值在于，它考察了在一次独特的灾难事件中，未被研究的人群中信息和通信技术的使用情况。这项工作的更广泛影响是为政策制定者和技术开发人员提供关于最有用和最有用的信息和通信技术类型的重要见解。这些调查结果将为设计新的技术和服务提出建议，这些新技术和服务将对处于灾害情况下的流离失所者，特别是处境最不利的人最有用。

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.