Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Post-Hurricane Participatory GIS Mapping along the Gulf Coast to Assess Community Preparedness and Social Network Connection

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University of Arizona graduate student Ben McMahan, supervised by Dr. Mark Nichter and Dr. Diane Austin, will undertake research on patterns of communication and networks of mutual post-disaster assistance in two localities on the U.S. gulf coast, one in Louisiana and one in Texas. Both regions were affected by severe acute hurricane events in 2005. The regions also experience chronic risks associated with moderate seasonal storms and long term coastal erosion and environmental degradation. The hurricanes highlighted gaps in national emergency management plans, across multiple scales and contexts. However, while national preparedness capacity is a critical component of effective management, the role that locally and regionally embedded social networks play in community preparedness is also significant, but poorly understood. This project is directed towards filling that gap.The researcher will combine ethnography and participant observation with participatory GIS mapping and social network analysis to investigate local responses to perceived environmental and climatic risks, as well as how these perceptions cohere or divide local and regional social groupings. The data will address the role that social networks play in mitigating immediate and long-term impacts of disruptions. The data also will permit examination of how network connectivity and historical ties to a community's social and physical landscape affect level of perceived risk and responses to disaster events and the chronic conditions that precede acute crises. Finally, the research will pioneer an integrative methodology that incorporates participatory mapping and social network analyses into qualaitative research, drawing on the strength of the confluence of ethnographic, participatory spatial, and social network data to strengthen understanding of how residents of regions facing endemic risks mobilize around these events.The research is important in the contribution it will make to theorizing new uses of social network analysis across scales in dynamic situations; to improving national disaster preparedness; and to furthering the education of a graduate student.