SGER: Understanding Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Community Response to Natural Disaster

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While the magnitude of natural disasters can be great, community responses before, during, and after calamitous events can also be significant. Community response includes both top-down and bottom-up activities, including activities coordinated by elected or appointed community leaders and the efforts of neighborhood residents to self-organize to protect the local environment. This Small Grant for Exploratory Research will examine the dynamics of community response to the June 2008 flood of the Iowa River in Iowa City, Iowa, a flood that crested at a level more than 9 feet (2.7 meters) above the river's flood level of 22 feet (6.7 meters) and 20 feet (6.1 m) above the river's median gage height for mid-June. (The peak flood flow rate of more than 40,000 cubic feet per second (1,130 cubic meters per second). was more than ten times the median flow rate for the same time period.) The investigators will collect time-sensitive data that will provide a foundation for modeling community response to a significant natural disaster. They will focus first on collecting data regarding the community's physical response to the flood, such as where, to what height, and when did sandbagging operations occur). They also will start to collect data about what strategies were followed to protect local buildings by conducting interviews to ascertain why sandbags were deployed to particular locations and what influenced decisions to reallocate resources. These interviews will be conducted with City of Iowa City administrators and University of Iowa facilities management staff to gather details about the sequence of actions associated with their attempts to save property and reduce damage and disruption. These data will be used to compare the spatiotemporal characteristics of the actual response with stated objectives in order to understand how objectives shifted during as the disaster unfolded. These data will be the used as input the development of spatially explicit simulation models that integrate physical flood characteristics with the spatiotemporal characteristics of top-down and self-organized community responses.This project will enhance basic understanding about the ways that communities respond to natural disasters like floods, with results that can be generalized to other locations as well as other types of disasters. The project will be especially valuable for helping to compare the spatiotemporal characteristics of the actual response with stated objectives in order to understand how objectives shifted during an ongoing disaster. The project will provide valuable education and training opportunities for a number of students, and it will help city and university administrators evaluate what transpired during the June 2008 flood, thereby enabling them to be more effective in preparing for and responding to future emergencies.