Collaborative Research: Social Networks and Mitigation in Areas of Chronic Disasters

合作研究：慢性灾害地区的社交网络和减灾

• 批准号: 0620264
• 负责人: Linda Whiteford
• 金额: $ 13.34万
• 依托单位: University of South Florida
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-08-01 至 2009-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0620264&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Social; Networks; Mitigation

More than half the world's population, apprxomiately 3.4 billion people, live in disaster-prone areas, and many reside under chronically hazardous conditions. The question is not why people live in highly hazardous zones, but how do people deal with associated difficulties? In this collobarative research project, Dr. Arthur Murphy of the University of North Carolina Greensboro and Dr. Linda M. Whiteford and Dr. Graham A Tobin of the University of South Florida, ask whether personal networks composed of subgroups, and links between those subgroups, provide disaster victims with advantages not available to people with either more tightly connected or sparsely distributed networks. The study builds on prior research on chronic hazards, disasters and recovery. The research will focus on communities in southern Mexico exposed to an active volcano that regularly deposits ash across the landscape. Formal and semi-formal interview data on exposure, impact, risk-perception, well-being, and personal relationships will allow researchers to ascertain how differently structured networks constrain individual outcomes and well-being. Investigating network structures as potential strategies for decreasing the harmful effects of volcanoes poses a significant area of research and may help predict how well people respond to continual exposure to a hazard. Beyond disaster research, potential applications include community and international development, plus community resilience research. In addition, the methodological innovations proposed for this study, once tested, could be adapted to other social sciences, as well as applied to disaster mitigation and recovery efforts by outlining out how to strengthen networks that are already in existence.

世界上一半以上的人口，约34亿人，生活在易受灾害的地区，许多人长期生活在危险的条件下。问题不在于人们为什么生活在高度危险的地区，而在于人们如何应对相关的困难？在这个合作研究项目中，北卡罗来纳大学格林斯博罗分校的亚瑟·墨菲博士、南佛罗里达大学的琳达·m·怀特福德博士和格雷厄姆·A·托宾博士提出了一个问题：由子群体组成的个人网络，以及这些子群体之间的联系，是否为灾难受害者提供了那些网络联系更紧密或分布更稀疏的人所无法获得的优势。这项研究建立在先前对慢性危害、灾害和恢复的研究基础之上。这项研究将集中在墨西哥南部的社区，那里有一座活火山，经常在整个地区沉积火山灰。关于暴露、影响、风险感知、幸福感和个人关系的正式和半正式访谈数据将使研究人员能够确定不同结构的网络如何约束个人的结果和幸福感。研究网络结构作为减少火山有害影响的潜在策略是一个重要的研究领域，并可能有助于预测人们对持续暴露于危险中的反应。除了灾害研究之外，潜在的应用还包括社区和国际发展，以及社区复原力研究。此外，为这项研究提出的方法创新，一旦得到检验，就可以适用于其他社会科学，并通过概述如何加强现有的网络，应用于减轻灾害和恢复工作。