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难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应对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，商品和货币援助。许多非正式报告还表明，如果要在灾害中有效地利用技术，仍然需要取得很大进展。例如，大量的低质量信息，比如人名的拼写错误，使得通过人名定位网站快速搜索家人和朋友变得困难甚至不可能。这项研究的重点是，在这场自然灾害发生后，在非自愿搬迁后，技术如何影响帮助和支持的交换，以及在疏散中寻找失去的家人和朋友。适应重大灾害和非自愿迁移的影响可能需要数月甚至数年的时间。为了获取灾后技术使用情况和评估灾后调整率，本项目将进行两轮回顾性访谈和自我报告调查，为期4-6个月。因为这项研究的重点是帮助的有效性，所以研究的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。本研究考察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。它还考察了志愿者如何使用技术以及他们帮助那些无法直接接入互联网或移动电话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触及最需要支持的人群。研究结果将同时引起计算机科学家的兴趣，他们对在这场灾难中起作用和不起作用的技术的创新应用感兴趣，同时也会引起社会科学家的兴趣，他们关注社会支持和灾难应对的潜在过程。这项研究也会引起决策者的兴趣，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资料，以及需要在哪些方面进行投资以减轻未来灾害的影响。这项工作的智力价值在于，它研究了在一次独特的灾难事件中，信息和通信技术在未被充分研究的人群中的使用情况。这项工作的更广泛的影响是为政策制定者和技术开发人员提供重要的见解，使他们了解哪些类型的信息和通信技术是最有用的，哪些类型的信息和通信技术将是最有用的。调查结果将导致对设计新技术和服务的建议，这些新技术和服务将对灾害情况下的流离失所者，特别是处境最不利的流离失所者最为有用。

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.